Robert Vimont-Vicary was consul of Siam/Thailand in Marseille, France, from 1919 to 1941. During World War II, Vimont-Vicary issued hundreds of visas and travel documents to Jews and other refugees, who were fleeing persecution by the Nazis and were piling into Marseille in huge numbers from 1940 to 1941. These Thai visas allowed them to emigrate to safety in Portugal and beyond. Some refugees even made it to Thailand and tried to build a life in Bangkok. Vimont-Vicary worked closely with the individuals and networks that organized diplomatic rescue operations in Marseille, most famously the American journalist Varian Fry, a “Righteous Among the Nations”, whose story was recently fictionalised in the Netflix series “Transatlantic”. Already under surveillance by the French secret service since 1940, Vimont-Vicary’s permission to act as a consul was revoked in 1941 by the French state. He went on, however, to issue Thai visas to refugees, in defiance of French authorities for several more months, before the police finally moved in and shut down the Thai consulate. Soon after these events, Robert Vimont-Vicary died an untimely death in 1942 and fell into obscurity for over eighty years. Based on previously unused primary sources, the lecture will explore Vimont-Vicary’s actions and motives, trace individual refugees, and establish a connection between Siam/Thailand and the Holocaust during this dramatic period of world history. The lecture will also share details of the research itself, which led from Bangkok to Marseille and to Paris, and which involved the hunt for a secret police file, the discovery of a living nephew of Robert Vimont-Vicary and a dedication to him by Pridi Banomyong.