Some people, I’ll tell you.
I really like some people.
I never met the two ladies I’m going to talk about. They lived long before I came along.
They were two sisters from London. Ida Cook, born in 1902, and Louise Cook, born August 24, 1904. Ida and Louise. As I said, I’ve never met them, but I liked them the moment I heard their story.
These two were unmarried sisters in their mid-thirties, and wouldn’t you know? Ida and Louise still lived with their parents.
One of them wrote romance novels for Mills and Boon (England’s Harlequin equivalent). And the other sister commuted to work as a secretary for the civil service. All of this in London.
They led a simple life. They ate meals at home. They wore homemade clothes.
And. They appreciated the arts, especially the opera. They loved opera so much that they would go to Germany for the weekend to see it there. This was during the 1930s. Now, I’m not a big opera fan, but I won’t hold that against them.
Anyway. No one paid attention to them crossing the border. That’s because they looked so ordinary and so harmless. Good old Ida and Louise were just a couple of dowdy women in their homemade clothes. Likewise, nobody noticed them on their return trip from Germany, in their furs or jewels. What? Furs and jewels?
Yes.
What Ida and Louise were doing, besides going to their good opera performances, was collecting valuables from would-be refugees to help them start new lives in a new country.
The scheme went like this. The sisters would find people who would vouch for these refugees. They sought out people who were willing to let these refugees stay in their homes. Then, the Cook sisters would assemble papers for them. The sisters used their own money for this, so the refugees could sell their own valuables for money to help them settle in their new lives.
The women entered and left through different checkpoints so the same guards wouldn’t be able to notice that they were wearing too much jewelry. They also created lies about all the valuables in their purses. They would tell the guards, “We can’t trust to leave our things in our apartment when we aren’t there.”
They acted simple and foolish and were never caught.
They did eventually halt their visits over the border after directly rescuing 29 people (mostly families). But they did not stop working. They continued to raise money and awareness and to help bring refugees to England.
These two did a lot of great work and saved many lives, while putting their own lives at risk. On July 28, 1964, Ida and Louise Cook were recognized and honored through Righteous Among the Nations.
Ida died in 1986, and Mary in 1991.
Good people doing good things.
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“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop
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“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” – Desmond Tutu
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“In a world where you can be anything, be kind.” – Unknown
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Two good sisters. Too good.
