Safe Passage
by Mary Burchell
Gala opera evenings. Sudden wealth and fame. Dangerous undercover missions into the heart of Nazi Germany. No one would have predicted such glamorous and daring lives for Ida and Louise Cook two decidedly ordinary women who lived quiet lives in the London suburbs. But throughout the 1930s, the remarkable sisters rescued dozens of Jews facing persecution and death. Ida's memoir of the adventures she and Louise shared remains as fresh, vital, and entertaining as the woman who wrote it. Even when Ida began to earn thousands as a successful romance novelist, the sisters directed every spare resource, as well as their considerable courage and ingenuity, towards saving as many as they could from Hitler's death camps. Safe Passage is a moving testimony showing us what can happen when conscience and compassion are applied to a collapsing world. [The Cook sisters]] defy the generalisation of social history: they were extraordinary. Telegraph