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concur.com. Hello,

1:14

it's Helena Bonham Carter. I'm just letting you

1:16

know that my podcast for BBC Radio 4,

1:19

History's Secret Heroes, is back with

1:21

a second series. These

1:23

are ten news stories of

1:25

unsung heroes, acts of resistance,

1:28

deception and unbelievable courage. For

1:30

the next ten minutes, you'll hear part

1:32

of the extraordinary story of Ida and

1:34

Louise Cook, two opera-loving sisters from England

1:37

who helped dozens of Jewish people

1:39

escape Nazi Germany. Ida

1:45

and Louise Cook were born three years apart

1:47

and grew up in a solid Church of

1:49

England family, first in Sunderland,

1:52

then in Northumberland. I

1:55

don't think I'd ever met two

1:57

sisters who were

1:59

so... close that

2:01

when one spoke the other finished the

2:03

sentence. Manny Meckler is an opera singer

2:06

who became close to the Cook sisters

2:08

in their later years. Ida was

2:10

a more aggressive one, stronger one,

2:13

a very strong face and

2:15

personality where Louise was a

2:17

wee bit softer and

2:20

she would always sit there and sort of like

2:22

lick her lips. Ida

2:24

would speak and Louise would correct

2:27

her. They just became their

2:29

best companions on everything.

2:32

After the girls left school, the family

2:34

moved to London. Ida and

2:36

Louise found work in the civil service.

2:39

They carried themselves as very plain,

2:41

very no-nonsense British women. Isabel

2:44

Vincent wrote Overture of Hope,

2:47

a biography of the Cook sisters. They

2:49

lived with their parents their whole life. They

2:52

came of age at a time of so-called

2:55

surplus women in

2:57

England. The First World War

2:59

resulted in the deaths of something

3:01

like 750,000 men and there weren't

3:04

enough men to marry but

3:06

also there was never a

3:09

sense that they missed that. You

3:12

know, I don't want to stereotype them

3:14

as sort of gouty but that

3:16

was the first impression I had. So

3:18

they were very antithesis of glamorous. In

3:21

1923, Louise was at work at the Board

3:23

of Education when she saw a sign advertising

3:26

a lecture on opera. She

3:28

wandered in. And she

3:31

was transformed after the hours

3:33

she spent listening to among other

3:36

operas one of the most

3:38

beautiful arias from Madame Butterfly.

3:42

She came home and told her parents

3:44

and told Ida that we must buy

3:47

a gramophone. Ida and

3:49

Louise developed a consuming passion for

3:51

opera. They would buy

3:53

cheap tickets and stand high up in

3:55

the gallery in their sturdy shoes and

3:58

homemade dresses. away

4:00

by musical fantasies. The

4:27

queue for the cheap seats soon became a

4:29

community. And they met all of these

4:32

people, their fellow opera fans, and

4:34

became lifelong friends with these people. But

4:37

they also would see the opera stars

4:40

coming in through the stage door, and

4:42

Ida collected not only autographs,

4:44

but photographs of them. And

4:47

then that's where the friendships were

4:49

made with these like huge stars

4:52

of the opera world. They

4:54

would stand at the stage door and say,

4:56

wonderful performance tonight, which is what you do,

4:59

of course, your opera fan. The

5:01

Cook sisters saved up their lunch budget for

5:03

a year to pay for a trip to New

5:05

York. There, they would hear

5:07

their idol, Italian soprano,

5:10

Amelita Galle Corci, sing

5:12

at the Metropolitan Opera.

5:14

Later, they would travel to Florence and

5:17

Verona. For two unmarried

5:19

middle-class sisters in the 1920s, they were

5:21

already living rather adventurous

5:24

lives. But the whole

5:26

map of Europe was soon to change.

5:32

The 21st of March, 1933, Berlin. At

5:36

the end of a day of celebration of the founding

5:38

of the Third Reich, Adolf

5:40

Hitler took his seat in the state opera

5:42

house. A performance of

5:45

Wagner's opera, the Meistersinger von Nuremberg,

5:47

was about to begin. Hitler

5:51

just recognized the power of the

5:53

music to sort of transform and

5:56

used it for propaganda purposes. told

6:01

opera conductors what they could perform

6:03

and what they couldn't perform. You

6:06

couldn't have operas by

6:08

Jewish composers after

6:11

1933. You

6:13

couldn't have Jewish conductors. One

6:16

conductor whose career benefited from the

6:18

new vacancies was Klemens Kraus. An

6:22

Austrian, Kraus was charismatic,

6:24

talented and ruthlessly ambitious.

6:27

He had no qualms about

6:29

conducting concerts for Hitler's birthday.

6:32

When he was asked to conduct these

6:35

propaganda exercises, there he was. When

6:37

he was asked to go to Poland and do

6:40

recitals for Hans Frank, butcher of

6:43

Poland who ran Auschwitz and would

6:45

end up killing millions of people,

6:48

he had no problem with it. Kraus

6:50

and his wife, the Romanian

6:52

soprano Viorica Ursulac, were

6:54

often seen in Krakow at Hans

6:56

Frank's parties. You know,

6:59

did they know what was going on? To

7:02

some extent, I think they must have known. But

7:06

for him, that was a way to get what

7:08

he wanted. Kraus

7:10

maintained that it was all about the music.

7:14

He and his wife performed at London's Royal Opera

7:16

House in the spring of 1934, waiting

7:19

for them at the stage door. Autograph books

7:22

and camera in hand were Ida

7:24

and Louise Cook. At

7:26

this time, the Cooks had no interest

7:28

in politics or world affairs. They

7:31

knew only of Kraus' talent. Ida,

7:33

she sort of shyly went up to him

7:35

and asked if she could take their photograph. And

7:38

the first photograph she took, she was so nervous,

7:40

was out of focus. But she

7:42

came back a few days later and got up the

7:45

courage to ask them again. The

7:47

sisters promised to present Kraus with a

7:49

copy of the photograph at the Salzburg

7:51

Festival that summer. Salzburg Festival

7:54

is one of the biggest festivals in the

7:56

world. It's very elite,

7:58

and it had an amazing connection. and actors and

8:01

performers and artists, and it's right

8:03

in the heart of Austria, right

8:05

11 kilometers over Hitler was born.

8:09

In the summer of 1934, Ida and Louise traveled

8:12

by train through the German countryside,

8:14

looking forward to the glorious music

8:16

that awaited them. In

8:19

their luggage, the photo of Kraus and Ustilak

8:21

were safely wrapped. As

8:23

they neared the Austrian border, a

8:26

German family prepared to leave their

8:28

carriage. The patriarch of the family

8:30

says to them, you know what, you would

8:32

do well not to cross that border. It's too

8:34

dangerous to cross that border. Days

8:36

earlier, on the 25th of July, a

8:39

group of Nazi supporters had stormed a government

8:41

building in Vienna and fired two

8:43

shots into the chest of the

8:45

Austrian chancellor, Engelbert Dolfus. This

8:48

attempted coup was crushed by the military,

8:51

but Dolfus had died of his

8:53

injuries. And Ida and Louise are

8:55

completely oblivious to what's gone on.

8:58

There's just so single-minded about going

9:00

to the Salzburg Festival that they

9:02

don't care about anything because it's a chance

9:04

for them to see Clemens Kraus

9:06

and his wife again and to go to

9:08

the opera. Undeterred,

9:11

the Koch sisters continued on to

9:13

Salzburg. There, they met

9:15

Ustilak again. She encouraged them to

9:18

follow her to Amsterdam, where she would be

9:20

singing the finale to Söleme. The

9:22

sisters scraped together their remaining money to

9:24

travel on to the Netherlands. After

9:27

that concert, Ustilak took the two women

9:29

by the arms and told them

9:31

there was someone she wanted them to

9:33

meet. They introduced us to the official

9:35

lecturer, a lady called Mica

9:38

Meyer-Lissman. Mica Meyer-Lissman was a

9:40

German musicologist. And they said

9:42

this is a great friend of ours who's coming to London

9:44

later in the year. Will you look after

9:46

her photos? Meyer-Lissman was

9:48

grand, distinguished, and seemed

9:51

more than capable of looking after herself. Even

9:54

so, the sisters were eager to

9:56

India themselves, Ustilak, so

9:58

they agreed to show her around London. We

10:00

took her to Westminster Abbey and she looked round and

10:02

said, is this Protestant or Catholic? So

10:05

we told her. We took her to St.

10:07

Paul's and she said, is this Protestant or Catholic?

10:09

So I thought, well, maybe I better ask where

10:11

she is before we get any further. And

10:13

so under the Dome of St. Paul's,

10:15

I remember, I said, which are you,

10:17

Protestant or Catholic? And she

10:20

said, I? Didn't you know I'm a Jewish? I,

10:22

to quote, laughed and said, no. It

10:25

hadn't occurred to her that Mitya Maya Lismond

10:27

might be Jewish. We were so

10:29

dumb then that we did not know that

10:31

to be Jewish and to come from Frankfurter

10:33

Mein in Germany already had the

10:36

seeds of tragedy in it. Back

10:39

in London, Ida Cook had left the civil

10:41

service to work as a fiction editor. Soon,

10:44

she began to write herself. Her

10:46

first novel, which she described as a light romance,

10:48

was published in 1935 under the pen name Mary

10:50

Burch. She

10:55

soon followed it with another and

10:57

another and another. So

10:59

we really didn't change

11:02

our standard of living. Still

11:04

made our own clothes. We still traveled

11:06

third class or a third then. But

11:09

then I began to have extra money.

11:11

And fortunately, before we could change our

11:13

style of living, we came

11:15

to what was the great drama of our lives.

11:18

Ida Cook was earning up to 1,000 pounds a year, a

11:21

very substantial income. She and

11:23

Louise traveled to Frankfurt to visit their

11:25

friend, Mitya Maya Lismond. Approaching

11:30

the Maya Lismond house, they passed a shop. The

11:33

German word, Yuda, Jew, was dorbed

11:35

over the window in paint. An

11:38

armed SS officer stood at the door,

11:40

forbidding people to enter. Inside

11:43

the Maya Lismond home, the family

11:45

sat around the dinner table alongside

11:47

Vierica Zulak and Clemens Kraus. They're

11:50

all having a meal. And

11:52

people started talking about what their

11:55

lives have become. One

11:57

of the relatives who goes on a

11:59

business. business trip and comes back into

12:02

Germany is stripped search

12:04

on the way back and humiliated.

12:07

Another person recounts the death

12:10

of a friend of

12:12

theirs in hospital because they couldn't

12:14

find a Jewish nurse to look

12:17

after them. And Ida and Louise said, what do

12:19

you mean? They couldn't believe

12:21

what they were hearing. I mean,

12:24

it got so bad that Louise started

12:26

to cry. The Maya

12:28

Lismans had already lost their livelihoods. Under

12:31

anti-Jewish laws, Mitya's husband had been forced

12:33

to sell his business. Ida

12:35

and Louise asked why the Maya Lismans couldn't

12:38

simply leave. They

12:40

replied that Jewish people who left Germany

12:42

were charged ruinous taxes by

12:44

the Nazi regime, and it

12:47

was virtually impossible for them to smuggle

12:49

out money or possessions. Moreover,

12:52

other safe countries routinely denied

12:54

Jewish refugees visas or work

12:56

permits, especially if they

12:58

were poor. Unless they had

13:01

a lot of money stashed abroad and good connections, most

13:04

Jews had no way to get out.

13:06

That's when they both realised that they

13:08

really needed to do something to help

13:10

these people. Thanks

13:13

for listening. If you like what

13:15

you heard, subscribe to History's Secret

13:17

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