Louise Cook (humanitarian)

This article is about the English humanitarian. For the World Rally Championship driver, see Louise Cook.
Mary Louise Cook
Born(1901-06-19)19 June 1901
Sunderland, England
Died27 March 1991(1991-03-27) (aged 89)
London, England
RelativesMary Burchell (sister)
HonoursRighteous Among the Nations (1964)
British Hero of the Holocaust (2010)
Righteous
Among the Nations
By country

Mary Louise Cook (19 June 1901 – 27 March 1991) was an English humanitarian who, along with her sister Ida Cook (1904–1986), helped Jews escape Nazi Germany in the 1930s.[1][2]

In 1965, the Cook sisters were honoured as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Israel. In 2010 she was recognised as a British Hero of the Holocaust with her sister.

Early life and education

Cook was born on 19 June 1901 in Sunderland, County Durham, England.[3] She was christened Mary Louise Cook after her mother.[2] She attended The Duchess's School in Alnwick.

Career

Louise and her sister, Ida Cook, worked as typists in the UK civil service.[4]

Personal life

Cook and her sister Ida resided together.

The two shared a love of opera and travelled to Austria and Germany to listen to performances. In order to hear Italian opera singer Amelita Galli-Curci perform in a full opera, Louise and Ida went without lunch and walked to work for two years, so as to be able to afford the trip from London to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.[5]

Humanitarian efforts

During the 1930s, the Romanian singer Viorica Ursuleac and her Austrian husband Clemens Krauss, a conductor of operas, were involved in helping Jewish people involved in the opera to escape the Nazi regime. The Cook sisters befriended Krauss, and they became involved with smuggling Jewish refugees' jewellery and other valuables out of Germany and Austria, so that the refugees could meet the financial requirements needed to emigrate.[6] The Cook sisters also housed refugees in England and lectured and advocated for Jews who needed help.[7] By 1939, the Cook sisters had assisted over two dozen refugees in escaping from the Holocaust.[6]

Demise

Louise Cook died on 27 March 1991 in London.[1]

Recognition and media coverage

Cook was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 1964.[8] She posthumously received the British Hero of the Holocaust in 2010.[3]

Louise and Ida Cook have been the subject of several articles and books, including Ida's memoir We Followed Our Stars (reissued as Safe Passage),[9] a 2007 essay in Granta entitled Ida and Louise,[2] and Isabel Vincent's Overture of Hope: Two Sisters' Daring Plan that Saved Opera's Jewish Stars from the Third Reich.[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Cook, (Mary) Louise (1901–1991)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/70842. Retrieved 14 August 2023. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ a b c "Ida and Louise". Granta. 2 July 2007. Retrieved 14 August 2023.
  3. ^ a b "Cook, Mary Louise". TracesOfWar.com. Retrieved 14 August 2023.
  4. ^ "The opera-loving sisters who 'stumbled' into heroism". BBC.com. 28 January 2017. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  5. ^ "Spinster Sisters Versus Nazis". tabletmag.com. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  6. ^ a b "Two British Sisters – A Typist and a Romance Novelist – Save Jewish Artists from the Holocaust With a Clever Con Involving Opera". History Unplugged Podcast. Retrieved 14 August 2023 – via Stitcher.com.
  7. ^ Talbot, Margaret (3 September 2019). "Ida and Louise Cook, Two Unusual Heroines of the Second World War". The New Yorker. Retrieved 14 August 2023.
  8. ^ "Ida and Louise Cook". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 14 August 2023.
  9. ^ "Safe Passage: The Remarkable True Story of Two Sisters Who Rescued Jews from the Nazis by Ida Cook". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 14 August 2023.
  10. ^ Vincent, Isabel (2023). Overture of Hope: Two Sisters' Daring Plan that Saved Opera's Jewish Stars from the Third Reich. Regnery History. ISBN 978-1684514069.