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The short, bespectacled Englishman behind the passport control desk didn't look much like a war hero.
At just over 5ft tall, Frank Foley was an unassuming figure, a hard worker with a cheerful manner.
But what the diminutive passport control officer lacked in stature, he more than made up for in courage.
Today after saving the lives of 10,090 Jews in World War Two he is ranked alongside Oskar Schindler, who was immortalised in the movie Schindler's List.
Like Schindler he is a member of an elite group of non-Jews to hold the honour of Righteous Among the Nations by Israel.
Foley trod a dangerous path in Germany in the Thirties as thousands of Jews tried to flee the Nazi regime.
He headed passport control at the British Embassy in Berlin until 1939.
And by bending the rules, he was able to help many Jews escape.
Foley's role was only officially acknowledged long after his death, partly because his job at the embassy was a cover for his work as an M16 agent.
But the men and women he saved from certain death never forgot his kindness.
Ernest Ruppel, who escaped to Palestine, said: "Foley was a chap who hid his light under a bushel.
"But all the time he was helping people get out of Germany and it wasn't easy. He was a great man. "
Werner Lachs, who fled to Britain with his parents, later wrote: "But for Mr Foley, I and my family might well have become another statistic of the Holocaust."
Foley, who grew up in Somerset, first proved his bravery during the First World War.
He was injured in 1918 and left unfit for front-line action.
But his courage and talent for languages earned him a career in the secret service.
He was sent to Berlin with wife Kay under the cover of a job at the Embassy.
By day, he worked as passport control officer, issuing visa papers.
But his real brief as an M16 agent was to keep an eye on the "Communist threat" .
After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Foley noted the construction of the first official camp for "political prisoners" at Dachau.
Within a month, two more had been built.
Visa applications from Jewish families started to flood into Foley's office.
By 1937, Jewish emigration was becoming increasingly difficult.
But knowing the fate that awaited these people, Foley was willing
to bend the rules.
One of the first to escape certain persecution because of his swift action was a young Jewish single mother, destined for a concentration camp.
Thanks to his intervention, she sailed to a new life in Southern Rhodesia.
Another woman desperate to leave Germany was Adele Werthheimer.
Her husband Leopold, a Jewish textile merchant, had been thrown in jail on a trumped-up charge.
After trying everywhere for a visa, she travelled to Berlin from Bavaria to see Foley.
With the guarantee of an exit visa, her husband was released and the family fled to Palestine.
Adele's son Simon, who was seven at the time, later wrote: "My mother always said he saved our lives. She held him up as an example I had to live up to. "
When one of Foley's agents, a Jew who worked in the fur trade, was arrested, he went to the Gestapo HQ to hand over a visa and won bis release.
Then came Kristallnacht, when more than 30,000 Jews were rounded up and taken into "protective custody".
But fearless Foley and his wife hid a number of Jews in their home.
And he threw his weight behind a British "refugee scheme" which
would allow greater numbers to leave Germany.
Meanwhile, with war drawing closer, Foley was providing an increasing amount of intelligence, setting up a network of agents across Germany.
Arnold Horwitz, a Jewish secret agent, said: "Frank certainly risked his career in order to save people."
With the invasion of Poland imminent, Foley was forced to leave Germany for Norway in August 1939.
On his last morning in Berlin, he told Hans Borchardt at the Jewish agency dealing with emigration to Palestine, England and Scandinavia to collect 80 permits for Britain from the consulate building by no later than 4pm.
Borchardt said: "In this way, 80 young people were saved shortly before the outbreak of war.
"I left Berlin on the same day with a permit to Great Britain signed by Foley."
Foley went onto play an invaluable role during the war.
He was made Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 1941 New Honours List and was decorated by King George VI at Buckingham Palace.
He retired from M16 in 1949, spending his last years in Stourbridge with his wife and daughter.
When he died in 1958, few knew of his secret past or of the many lives he had saved.
One Jew, Benno Cohn, summed up Foley's bravery.
He said: "He was a man who stood out above all the others like a beacon.
"He was a man who in my opinion was one of the greatest among the nations of the world."
Foley is one of around 6,000 non-Jews honoured by Israel.
Others include Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice of Greece, who hid a Jewish family in occupied Athens during the war.
Scotswoman Jane Haining was also a heroine.
She died in a Nazi concentration camp after refusing to abandon 400 Jewish girls in her care in occupied Hungary.
