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Sir Thomas Hildebrand Preston, 6th Baronet, OBE (2 June 1886 – 30 December 1976) was a British diplomat. He was a posthumous recipient of the British Hero of the Holocaust award for saving Jewish lives in Lithuania in 1940 by issuing documents that permitted them to travel. He was consul in Ekaterinburg in Russia at the time of the murder of the Romanov family there in July 1918.

Life

Thomas Hildebrand Preston was born in Epping, Essex, the son of William Thomas Preston and Alice Mary Stevens. He emigrated to New Zealand with his father who started farming at Timaru, and then was educated at Westminster School and studied Russian at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He later studied at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris, and the University of Munich. Preston lost an eye due to a school cricket injury and wore a monocle over his good eye.

Career

Around 1910, he joined the United Kingdom Diplomatic Service. On 23 May 1913, he was appointed British Vice-Consul in Ekaterinburg in Russia. On 29 July 1916, he was appointed his government's consul for Perm, the West Siberian government in Tobolsk and the Akmolinsk Territory – still with his official residence in Ekaterinburg. He was there at the time of the murder of the Romanov family in July 1918 and was haunted later by the idea that he might have been able to save the Russian royal family. At a telegraph office on 18 July, he attempted to send the message "The Tsar Nicholas the Second was shot last night" to Arthur Balfour in London. The Bolshevik military commissar Filipp Goloshchyokin struck out Preston's text, rewriting "The hangman Tsar Nicholas was shot last night – a fate he richly deserved."

In October 1919, he was transferred to Vladivostok to perform intelligence duties and on 30 October 1919, he was appointed as the new consul there. He was then employed for a time in the Overseas Trade Department of the British Foreign Office in London.

On 4 August 1922, Preston was assigned to the British Trade Mission then posted to Moscow. After the conclusion of the same, he was appointed as the new British Consul in Petrograd/Leningrad in November 1922. Following the temporary severance of the United Kingdom's diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1927, he left on 3 June 1927, being transferred instead to the post of consul in Turin, which he held from 23 September 1927 to 3 July 1929.

During World War II

On 31 July 1929 (taking up duty on 7 December 1929), Preston took up the post of British Consul to the Lithuanian government in Kaunas, the temporary capital of Lithuania. In this position he was promoted to Secretary 2nd Class on 10 February 1930, Secretary 1st Class on 17 July 1935 and Counsellor in the Diplomatic Service on 1 December. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1934. On 12 June 1940, he was promoted to Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary.

In this position, he provided 800 Jews with legal travel certificates, a few hundred of which were able to cross the Baltic Sea to neutral Sweden. He also assisted an additional 400 Lithuanian Jews to escape to Mandatory Palestine in 1940 by issuing them illegal Palestine certificates, thus enabling them to leave for the Middle East via Turkey. This was irregular, as it greatly exceeded the number approved by the British government for immigrants to Palestine. At least 400 forged copies of the Preston visas were discovered by British officials in Istanbul. Other diplomats in Kaunas that issued documents that permitted Jews to travel included Chiune Sugihara of Japan and Jan Zwartendijk of the Netherlands.

In 1940, Preston was placed on 'the Black Book' (Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. "Special Search List Great Britain"), a list of 2820 persons who were to be arrested as a priority by the SS in the event of a German occupation of Britain.

In September 1940, he was transferred to Istanbul on the dissolution of his previous post following the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. From 18 June 1941 to 1948, he held the post of Counsellor in the Diplomatic Service at the British Embassy in Cairo. He retired in 1948.

Later life

He married Ella Henrietta von Shickandantz on 3 October 1913. He studied harmony, counterpoint and orchestration under noted Russian musicians. In 1937 he wrote White Roses, a ballet in one act, that was performed at the Kaunas State Theatre, as well as a piano score for a second ballet, The Dwarf Grenadier. In 1958, Preston composed a ceremonial march originally meant to accompany visitors to NATO headquarters at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris.

Before his appointment to Lithuania, Preston had worked as a gold prospector in the Ural Mountains and maintained mining interests. He wrote the book Before the Curtain (1950). He succeeded as the 6th Baronet Preston, of Beeston St Lawrence, Norfolk on 7 December 1963. He lived at Beeston Hall.

He was a recipient of the British Hero of the Holocaust award in January 2018 for saving Jewish lives. Preston's efforts were recognised in 2018 in the exhibition "Building Bridges" at the Embassy of the United Kingdom, Vilnius, and in 2022 at the Kaunas Holocaust Memorial Day.

Some of Preston's papers are held at the University of Leeds Special Collections.

References

1. "Preston, Thomas Hildebrand", National Library of New Zealand
2. "Sir Thomas Preston recalls Ekaterinburg". No. The Spectator. 11 March 1972. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
3. Rappaport, Helen (2017). The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg. St. Martin's Press. p. 200. ISBN 9780312603472.
4. Rappaport, p. 200"
5. "No. 34056". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 June 1934. p. 3567. "Thomas Hildebrand Preston, Esq., His Majesty's Consul and Charge d'Affaires ad interim at Kovno."
6. ^ "UK’s Special Envoy for post-Holocaust issues visited Lithuania", Mirage News, 19 October 2019
7. "Diplomatic Rescue by Country". Retrieved 18 August 2023.
8. "A NATO hymn?", North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 20 October 2016
9. Eytan Halon (28 January 2018). "Britain honors eight Holocaust 'heroes' for saving Jewish lives". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
10. "Britain honours its Holocaust heroes". UK Government. 23 January 2018. Retrieved 3 July 2019.
11. "Sir Thomas Preston papers", Jisc

• 1886 births
• 1976 deaths
• 20th-century British diplomats
• Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
• Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom
• Officers of the Order of the British Empire
• People educated at Westminster School, London
• People who rescued Jews during the Holocaust
• Sciences Po alumni
• The Holocaust in Lithuania