Holocaust Remembrance Day - Jane Haining

Jane Haining was born in Dunscone, near Dumfries in 1897. She worked for ten years in a threadmaker's in Paisley, but it was in Glasgow at a meeting about the Jewish Mission that she turned to a friend and said, prophetically: 'I have found my life-work'. In 1932, she got the call to work at a Church of Scotland mission to the Jews in Budapest, where she took charge of the Girls' Home.

Famous for her Scots accent, she became popular with the 400 children who attended the school - a mix of Christian and Jews. Many were orphans from broken or poverty-stricken homes, while others were sent simply because they got an excellent education from the Scots.

Her love for the children is evidenced by her letters: 'We have one nice little mite who is an orphan and is coming to school for the first time. She seems to be a lonely wee soul and needs lots of love. We shall see what we can do to make life a little happier for her.' In another letter, she wrote: 'We have one new little six-year-old, an orphan without a mother or a father. She is such a pathetic wee soul to look at and I fear, poor lamb, has not been in too good surroundings before she came to us... she certainly does look as though she needs heaps and heaps of love.'

She was on leave in Scotland when World War II broke out, but immediately embarked on the hazardous journey back to Budapest and the children. When the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944, she ignored the Church of Scotland's warning for missionaries to come home to safety. 'If these children need me in the days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in the days of darkness?' Her sister, Nan O'Brien, later recalled: 'It was no surprise that she refused to come back. She would never have had a moment's happiness if she had come home and left the children.' During the war, Jane protected the children to the best of her ability.

In early May, the Nazi authorities raided the school. They searched her office and bedroom, gave her 15 minutes to get ready and took her away. She was jailed on the charges of British espionage and helping Jews. She was accused of working amongst Jews and of weeping - she wept as she had to sew the yellow Stars of David onto the dresses of her children. One of her former wards later recalled: 'I still feel the tears in my eyes and hear in my ears the siren of the Gestapo motor car. I see the smile on her face while she bade me farewell. I never saw Miss Haining again, and when I went to the Scottish Mission to ask the minister about her, I was told she had died. I did not want to believe it, nor to understand, but a long time later I realised that she had died for me, and for others. The body of Miss Haining is dead, but she is not alone, because her smile, voice and face are still in my heart.'

She was soon deported, along with some of her Jewish children, to Auschwitz. In the space of three months 1,300,000 were killed in Auschwitz - among them #79467, Jane Haining. Refusing to reject her children, she died for her beliefs on August 16, 1944 in the gas chambers along with a group of Hungarian women. The Church of Scotland was sent her death certificate from Auschwitz: 'Miss Haining, who was arrested on account of justified suspicion of espionage against Germany, died in hospital, July 17, of cachexia brought on by intestinal catarrh.'

Ben Helfgott, a Holocaust survivor and Chairman of Yad Vashem Committee of Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: 'When the children were taken away she went with them to Auschwitz. She was not able to save them, but she looked after them. What she did was a supreme act of mercy and kindness.'

In 1997 Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Memorial in Jerusalem, awarded Jane Haining a medal and a place in the Righteous Among the Nations for her selfless dedication to the children. The award was presented to her sister, Nan O'Brien of Londonderry, Northern Ireland, by the Israeli Ambassador to Britain at a ceremony in Glasgow.

Other Scots born persons known to have died in Nazi concentration camps:
• Jean Fletcher: b. Dundee 12/12/1892 - d. 1942, Auschwitz
• Martha Hildesheim: b. Glasgow 1872 - d. 1940, Theriesenstadt
• Herman Eskovitz: b. Glasgow 1927 - d. Auschwitz
• Deborah Pollock: b. Glasgow 1892 - d. 1942, Auschwitz
• Bernard Pasha: b. Edinburgh 1907 - d. 1942, Auschwitz
• Paula Herzfeld: b. Glasgow 1900 - d. Theriesenstadt
• Bessie Davis, or Beugelmans: b. Edinburgh 1896 - d. 1942, Auschwitz
• her husband, Boris Beugelmans: b. Edinburgh 1896 - d. 1942, Auschwitz
• Jacques Blokjesman: b. Paisley 1921 - d. 1944, Belsen Bergen

LIGHT A VIRTUAL CANDLE at http://www.hmd.org.uk/