The story of Ida and Louise Cook, Sunderland's hero sisters who helped the Jewish families in Nazi Germany

In a world where television dramas are made based on the life of Cilla Black, or someone cheating in a quiz show, it is fair to assert that they really ought to be more celebrated.

Among the honours bestowed upon them were British Hero of the Holocaust award and the Righteous Among the Nations award – an honour presented by Israel to non-Jews who risked their own lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination.

When you add to this that they were from Sunderland and lived on Croft Avenue next to The Chesters pub, it begins to sound like the tallest of tales. But like all the best stories, it’s entirely true.

Early days

Ida was born in the then-town in 1904, Louise (actually Mary Louise) in 1901, also in Sunderland. They were the daughters of Mary and James Cook, a customs and excise officer. Adult life began prosaically enough when they became civil servants themselves. They were typists.

As the elder girl Louise was first to pass her clerical exams and became a secretary earning two pounds and six shillings a week at the Board of Education. Ida followed two years later.

Typing away in London about a century ago, they became obsessed with opera after Louise heard a phonograph. She spent a dizzying £23 on a wind-up gramophone.

But recorded music, especially then, has never matched live sound, so they saved what they could to attend performances.

Ida later said: “Fortunately we have always realised the futility of grumbling enviously about someone else’s salary. It only makes you overlook what you can do with your own.”

Extraordinary scrimping enabled them to sail third class to New York in December 1926, where they saw Amelita Galli-Curci in Verdi’s La Traviata. Galli-Curci would become a friend; in the days before stalking was a consideration.

The Cooks’ opera obsession meant they needed more money to fund their trips to the great opera houses of Europe. Ida stumbled upon a very profitable new line of work.

Best-selling author

She had written about their real adventures and sold the stories. This would lead to a highly successful and profitable career as a romantic novelist for Mills and Boon, writing as Mary Burchell. The first of her 112 novels was published in 1936.

The mention of female romantic novelists of the period draws inevitable comparisons with Barbara Cartland, a far better known writer and commercially incredibly successful.

However, whereas Cartland remains a quite ridiculous figure in the eyes of many and a caricature of herself, Ida Cook seems anything but. Ida was also a far superior writer.

Yet writing was a means to an end and opera remained her first love. Saving people from the Holocaust is what Ida and Louise are best remembered for; but it was the combination of novel writing, opera and bottomless charm which serendipitously combined to help them save the lives of 29 Jews.

In 1934, a year after Hitler took over Germany, an Austrian conductor called Clemens Krauss introduced them to a Jewish woman who, for obvious reasons, wished to move to Britain.

Saving lives in Nazi Germany

The woman was Frau Meyer-Lissman, a lecturer who gave talks on opera. The introduction led to the sisters doing what they could before World War II began in 1939.

They felt compelled to help the desperate and went to extreme lengths to do so. In order to communicate with both the German authorities and refugees, Louise taught herself German.

They smuggled very valuable jewellery out of Germany by hiding it in plain sight; wearing very expensive brooches, pearls and the like as though they were ephemeral nick-nacks bought from Jacky White’s Market. Guards assumed it was all fake.

They also sewed the labels of cheap British brands onto expensive furs. Imagine buying a Chanel handbag then having to pretend it was a genuine Top Shop.

These items, which mainly belonged to Jews, were then smuggled into Britain. This was necessary as without some financial guarantee refugees were not allowed into Britain.

Had the Cooks been caught by the Nazi guards inspecting the trains they travelled on, they could have been executed. But they had an added advantage of being a familiar and accepted sight at Cologne Airport. Just those two English opera-nuts who lived next to The Chesters.

In the event of someone realising the jewellery was real, Ida’s cover story would have been: “We were two nervous British spinsters who didn’t trust our families at home and so when we went abroad we took all our jewellery with us.”

Before their first opera-chasing trip to mainland Europe they did not know any Jews. They were even less aware at the time of what being Jewish after 1933 in Germany entailed.

Legacy

Ida and Louise were unable to save any more lives after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, forcing Britain to declare war and making cultural trips to Germany impossible.

As mentioned at the start of this piece, the Cook sisters were honoured for their achievements. In 1956 Ida Cook became an early subject of the TV show This is Your Life. In 2017 a blue plaque was finally installed to commemorate them on Croft Avenue.

However, while the well-connected yet somewhat ludicrous woman and lesser talent that was Barbara Cartland became a dame, neither Cook was ever given any such gong. This is before we muse upon the “merit” required to receive an “honour” today.

Ida died in 1986, Louise in 1991. Their honour is the esteem they are held in and their story, had it been presented to a Hollywood producer as fiction, would be turned down like a bedspread for being just too incredible. Yet it’s true.

And it began in Sunderland, right next to The Chesters.