Sisters of mercy

A NEW book celebrates the 27 remarkable men and women who have received the Hero Of The Holocaust award, the UK government’s belated honour for the handful of Britons whose daring acts saved Jews during the Nazi period. All but two of the recipients – Denis Avey and Sir Nicholas Winton – received the award posthumously when it was presented at 10 Downing Street two years ago by prime minister Gordon Brown.

The Cook sisters pictured together after the war The Cook sisters pictured together after the war

There is courage, compassion and often astonishing ingenuity in the stories of these selfless individuals. Most of them survived the war but a few paid with their lives for defying the Third Reich.

Perhaps the most unlikely heroes were Ida and Louise Cook, plain-looking spinster sisters in their 30s living with their parents in a humdrum south London suburb. Although their background was as civil service office workers by the late Thirties Ida – under the pen-name Mary Burchell – had launched a successful new career as a Mills & Boon romantic novelist.

The sisters’ great passion was for the opera and as well as spending all their spare time and money on attending operatic performances at Covent Garden and abroad, they had an extraordinary talent for befriending the international opera stars of the day. It was this personal connection to a world of high culture far removed from their own suburban existence which led to their involvement in rescuing Jews from the Holocaust.

The Cook showed great defiance during the Holocaust

Among their glittering circle of friends were the Romanian soprano Viorica Ursuleac and her Austrian husband Clemens Krauss, director of the Vienna State Opera. In 1934 the couple introduced Ida and Louise to Mitia Mayer-Lismann, a Jewish musicologist from Frankfurt. It was through Mitia that the carefree opera buffs were first made aware of anti- Semitism under Hitler’s rule.

Over the next few years as their lives became ever more imperilled the Jews of Germany and then Austria frantically sought ways of escaping abroad. But they were caught in a trap. No country would accept them unless they had the means to support themselves but they were forbidden by the Nazis to take money or valuables out of the country. Britain was prepared to allow German Jews in temporarily as long as they had a British citizen to act as their financial guarantor. Not surprisingly it was very difficult to secure one.

Ever resourceful, the Cook sisters proceeded to provide a lifeline to some of these desperate Jews. Ida, whose income as a romantic novelist was five times as much as it had been as a civil service typist, said she became “intoxicated” by her money and “the moving and overwhelming thought that I could save life with it”.

The sisters had long been used to making short trips to European cities to see operas. Now they used these as a cover for secret meetings with Jews eager to flee Germany – initially musicians and intellectuals with whom they were put in touch by the Krausses and Mitia Mayer-Lismann. Although forbidden to take their capital out of Germany the Jews were able to convert it into jewels and furs which the Cooks smuggled across the border so that they could be sold in England to provide financial support for the refugees when they arrived.

B UT they still needed to find Britons to be official guarantors, even when the refugees were in fact self-funding. The Cooks worked tirelessly to organise the complex paperwork demanded by the Home Office, which to their dismay was often bogged down in bureaucratic muddle. By now the sisters were aware that war loomed and they were running out of time. They didn’t balk at bending the rules.

Between 1937 and 1939 – right up to the outbreak of war – Ida and Louise made their periodic trips to Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne, Berlin and Vienna, posing as eccentric opera lovers. Typically they would leave London on a Friday evening and return in time for Louise to report for work at her office on Monday morning.

Often the Cooks flew to Germany then sailed back to England from Holland – a ruse to fool Nazi border guards. After all they were leaving England unadorned and returning wearing diamonds, pearls and fabulous fur coats. The sisters never tried to conceal the jewellery – which often represented a desperate Jew’s entire fortune – but wore it with panache. Once when they had to smuggle out an ostentatious brooch, “a great oblong of blazing diamonds”, Ida boldly pinned it to her cheap Marks & Spencer jumper knowing that the border guards would assume it must be a fake. The trick worked. Sometimes they left their modest watches at home and returned with the most expensive Swiss models on their wrists. With furs they avoided suspicion by switching Continental labels for British ones before leaving Germany.

This was all highly illegal and they were putting themselves in consid- erable danger. But they relied on the protection of their British passports and their own brazen nerve. To give them added credibility during the increasingly rigorous questioning by border officials their friend Clemens Krauss – by now at the Munich State Opera – supplied them with details of forthcoming opera performances.

During their trips they met distraught Jews of all ages and walks of life, hearing their harrowing sto- ries and deciding which ones they were best able to help. Louise even learned German to improve communication with their petitioners. Far from acting furtively they stayed at the best hotels, such as Berlin’s famous Adlon, where they often saw the Nazi top brass – Goering, Goebbels, Himmler and even Hitler. “If you stood and gazed at them admiringly,” Ida later said, “no one thought you were anything but a couple of admiring fools.” Playing their roles to perfection, in the evening they went off to the opera.

Ida spent much of her own money on the rescue missions and financed a number of refugees who lacked funds. She bought a flat in London to provide the newly arrived with somewhere to stay. Eventually she ran out of money and started borrowing – ending up heavily in debt.

WHEN word of what they were doing spread within Jewish communities they received hundreds of letters pleading for help and it broke their hearts that they had to turn so many people away. In the end they completed 29 successful rescue mis- sions – some of which represented whole families so the number of saved lives was higher. Among the rescued were Mitia Mayer-Lismann and her family, who remained the sisters’ lifelong friends.

After the war they didn’t slip back into ordinary private life. Strangers to the concept of “compassion fatigue” Ida and Louise continued for years to assist and raise funds for refugees across Europe.

In 1965 they were named Right- eous Among The Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memo- rial authority – two of only 14 Britons to be so honoured. Ida died in 1986 and her sister in 1991.

The Cook sisters embodied the finest qualities in the British character: decency, kindness and fairness. Ida put it more modestly. “We called ourselves Christian,” she said, “and tried to do our best.

● To order Heroes Of The Holocaust by Lyn Smith (Ebury Press) at £16.99 with free UK delivery, send a cheque payable to Express Bookshop to: Lyn Smith Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth TR11 4WJ or call 0871 988 8367 or visit www.expressbookshop.com

Monica Porter’s book Deadly Carousel tells the story of her mother, who rescued Jews from the Nazis in Hungary.

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