From The Times
March 10, 2010

Sisters of mercy Ida and Louise Cook among Britain’s Holocaust heroes

Valentine Low

In the years before the Second World War, Ida and Louise Cook’s love of music took them time and again to Austria and Germany as they travelled to see the operatic stars of the day.

Few officials paid much attention to the sisters from Wandsworth, southwest London, two unremarkable-looking young women who seemed notable only for their fondness for jewellery and fine clothes. What no one realised was that the women were involved in a sophisticated smuggling operation that helped save the lives of dozens of Jews.

The furs on their backs and the jewels they wore belonged to Jewish families trying to escape the Nazis. And it was thanks to the Cook sisters’ daring that the families were able to get out of Germany and reach safety in Britain or the United States.

Yesterday at 10 Downing Street their memory was honoured, along with that of 25 other Britons who helped Jews and other persecuted groups, when their families were presented with Britain’s first Heroes of the Holocaust medals.

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The sisters, helped by Ida’s earnings as a successful novelist for Mills & Boon, were recruited by Clemens Krauss, the eminent Austrian conductor, after they had become friends of his wife, Viorica Ursuleac, the Romanian soprano. “He told them about the plight of the Jews in Europe,” Rolf Cook, their nephew, said. “He would organise concerts that my aunts would go to. They would arrive in fairly plain clothes. Then they would put on fancy clothes and jewellery and furs that belonged to these Jews. The Jews were allowed to leave Europe, but they could not take their wealth with them.”

In all, the Cook sisters helped 29 families. “It could so easily have gone wrong, if too many questions had been asked — ‘What are these two English girls doing here?’ ” said Lydia Cook, 83, their sister-in-law.

The sisters lived on long after the war, becoming close friends with the families they helped. Other Britons who helped Jews were less fortunate. Jane Haining, from Dunscore in Scotland, worked in a Jewish orphanage in Budapest. She was back home when war broke out but immediately returned to look after the girls.“She thought of herself as their mother and so she could not leave them,” her niece Deidre McDowell, 61, said. “The children were orphans. Who else was going to look after them?

“In Budapest there were very difficult times. She had to go out looking for food for the children. She also talked about cutting up her leather suitcase to make soles for shoes.”

In April 1944 Miss Haining was arrested, accused, among other things, of listening to BBC broadcasts, and eventually sent to Auschwitz, where she died. “It is a great honour and privilege to be here,” Mrs McDowell said. “It is a story of somebody doing something selflessly, which ought to be remembered. But I am sure Jane would not have wanted any of this fuss.”

Only two recipients were still alive to accept their medals from the Prime Minister — Sir Nicholas Winton and Denis Avey. Sir Nicholas, who is aged 100, organised the rescue of 669 mainly Jewish children by train from Prague in 1939. Mr Avey, 91, exchanged places with a Jewish inmate at Auschwitz while he was a prisoner of war, gathering facts about conditions and helping an inmate to survive by sharing supplies.

Gordon Brown said: “These individuals are true British heroes and a source of national pride for all of us. They were shining beacons of hope in the midst of terrible evil because they were prepared to take a stand against prejudice, hatred and intolerance.”