“2 SS thugs guarded the border. They put a rifle against me. I said ‘What do you want?’ They took me to a room & said ‘Put everything in your pocket on the table.’ I had a photo from a girlfriend.
‘Ah’ he said, ‘That’s not a Jewish girlfriend. That is an Aryan madchen.”
I said ‘No.’
What do you think he did? Put a pistol at my head: ‘I’ll count to 10 & if you don’t say by 10 she’s an Aryan, you are dead.’
I said ‘Are you mad? She’s Jewish.’
‘You heard what I said. 1, 2…’
“By 8 the door opened. The inspector came in. He said ‘Put it down’.
He said ‘He’s got an Aryan madchen there.’
I said ‘Her name is so & so & she’s Jewish.’
So he said to that Nazi ‘You heard what he said. What else do you want? She’s Jewish, that is it.’
He said ‘I can’t let you past now, you have to stay the night in prison.’
They took a taxi, drove me back to Treia, put me in prison for 4 days, I ate 1 piece of bread & drank 1 cup of water. After 4 days I was ordered out downstairs & there was a fellow, ‘Heil Hitler. Are you Jewish? Sit down. Tell me your life story from the moment you were born until you sit down here.’ I told him what I know. The door opened, a fellow comes in: ‘Tomorrow a transport is going to Dachau, put him in.’ He left.
I said ‘If I leave the country in a normal way, wouldn’t that be better than sending me to Dachau?’
He said ‘Have you got a passport?’
I said yes.
‘Right, go back to Berlin, report to the Gestapo, get your visa for wherever you want to go to & then get a train from the station to Holland.”
I said ‘Thank you very much.’
‘And don’t tell them I let you go, just get out of here quietly.
Frank went to the British embassy in Berlin.
“There was an inspector, he was well known [probably Frank Foley]. I told him what happened to me. He said: ‘Give me your passport. OK’. That man, he did so many good things. Whenever he was on duty there wasn’t one who was sent out without a visa.”