New MI6 chief's grandfather was Nazi spy, documents reveal

Independent

9 hours ago

The new MI6 chief is reportedly the granddaughter of a Nazi spy known as the 'butcher', according to unearthed documents.
Blaise Metreweli made history as she was appointed as the first ever female head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6 earlier this month.
But according to German archives, seen by the Daily Mail, her grandfather was Constantine Dobrowolski, a Nazi spy known as the 'butcher'.
Mr Dobrowolski was a Ukrainian who reportedly defected from the Red Army to become the Nazi's chief informant in the region of Chernihiv.
Ms Metreweli never met her grandfather as he stayed in Nazi-occupied Ukraine while his family fled the Red Army liberation of the region in 1943.
The documents held in Freiburg, Germany describe how Mr Dobrowolski was dubbed 'Agent 30' by his Nazi commanders.
Born to a German-Polish father and a Ukrainian mother in 1906, the Daily Mail reports he hated the Soviet Union when his family's estate was seized after the 1917 revolution.
He joined the Nazis in 1941, and was paid a monthly wage of just 81 Reichsmark, around £250 today, for spying.
In letters to his Nazi officers, he signed off 'Heil Hitler' and said he took part in a massacre of Jewish people near Kyiv.
The Daily Mail reported that there are also accounts of him looting the bodies of Holocaust victims and laughing at the sexual assault of female prisoners.
The Soviets put a 50,000-rouble – the equivalent of £200,000 today – bounty on Mr Dobrowolski and labelled him 'the worst enemy of the Ukrainian people'.
He remained in Nazi-occupied Ukraine after his family fled the Soviet advance in 1943. The last record of him is from August 1943, a month before the Red Army took Chernihiv.
After the war, his wife, Barbara, and son, Constantine, arrived in Britain. Barbara remarried and Constantine - Ms Metreweli's father - took his stepfather's name. Neither he nor Ms Metreweli knew his father.
Ms Metreweli is a career intelligence officer, having joined the secret intelligence service in 1999, shortly after graduating from Pembroke College, Cambridge. Most of her career has been spent in operational roles in the Middle East and Europe.
A Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office spokesman said: 'Blaise Metreweli neither knew nor met her paternal grandfather. Blaise's ancestry is characterised by conflict and division and, as is the case for many with eastern European heritage, only partially understood.
'It is precisely this complex heritage which has contributed to her commitment to prevent conflict and protect the British public from modern threats from today's hostile states, as the next chief of MI6.'