British officials are not given to expressions of righteous
anger; the dispatches in my red boxes usually reflect the Foreign
Office tradition of measured and judicious prose.
Thankfully, there are exceptions. As we approach Holocaust
Memorial Day tomorrow, I’ve been paying tribute to British
diplomats who voiced outrage over the persecution of Jews in Nazi
Germany — and acted on their words. After the Kristallnacht
pogrom cast Jews onto the streets in November 1938, our Charge
d’Affaires in Berlin, Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, sent the
following telegram to London.
“I can find no words strong enough in condemnation of the
disgusting treatment of so many innocent people,” he wrote. “The
civilised world is faced with the appalling sight of 500,000
people about to rot away in starvation.”
Ogilvie-Forbes let his embassy passport officer bend the rules
and issue travel documents to thousands of Jews, allowing them to
escape Germany. Margaret Reid was one official who processed the
permits.
Earlier, our Consul-General in Munich, John Carvell, secured the
freedom of 300 Jews from Dachau in 1937. His counterpart in
Lithuania, Sir Thomas Preston, helped hundreds of Jews escape to
Sweden in 1940. This week, their descendants came to
the Foreign Office to receive Hero of the Holocaust
Medals, granting their forebears posthumous recognition.
The diplomat in Berlin who handed out thousands of travel
documents was MI6 station chief Frank Foley (his duties as
passport officer were his cover). Today, he is commemorated at
Yad Vashem in Jerusalem as one of the Righteous Among Nations.
In truth, too few people in that era strained every nerve and
sinew to help the Jews. It was left to individual diplomats of
great moral courage to do what was possible, sometimes in breach
of the rules.
As Holocaust Memorial Day approaches, we would be committing a
grave error if we dared overlook its message. The bigotry and
hatred that paved the way for the Holocaust has never wholly
disappeared. You can find it today on the internet and sometimes
in our public discourse.
Recent genocides have not always encountered a determined
response. A United Nations inquiry found in 2016 that the
persecution of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq by Daesh
(otherwise known as IS) amounted to the “crime of genocide”. Yet
some in this country resolutely opposed our military action
against Daesh.
Even today, the truth about the Holocaust is sometimes denied.
Comparisons are drawn between Zionism and Nazism, including by
people who should know better. Hence the importance of the
commemoration this weekend; the tragedy is that it remains
necessary.
