“Between 1934 and 1939, two “nervous British spinsters” were regular visitors to the opera houses of Germany and Austria. But the trips also served a greater and more dangerous purpose – saving Jewish lives.
Ida and Louise Cook risked their own lives dozens of times by smuggling out valuable goods for those attempting to flee the Nazi regime, as well as passing on messages and meeting contacts, some of whom were active in the underground movement.
… At that point Ida – then earning £5 a week as a shorthand typist – wrote what she described as “a light romance” which was published by Mills and Boon.
Over the course of the next 50 years, under the pen name of Mary Burchell, she wrote about 130 novels for the publisher and “the money just kept coming in”. During the late 1930s this funded the sisters’ trips to Germany and Austria.”
It looks like there might be a movie in the works (starring
Cate Blanchett and Emma Thompson) but the really interesting part is that the
scriptwriters doing research for the movie think Ida may have downplayed their war
work in her memoir for reasons of national security, i.e. she and Louise also
had secret backing from the British government and were doing spy stuff on top
of smuggling valuables and messages for refugees. (It’s not like the opera isn’t
a good place to eavesdrop on high-ranking nazis, especially if the director can
make sure you get the best seats in the house.)
AND And they were civil-service stenographers… so basically the
sort of people who might otherwise have been recruited as code-breakers at Bletchley
Park
The opera-loving sisters who ‘stumbled’ into heroism – BBC News
Mooncustafer 