Jane Haining - A Life of Love and Courage

 The Renfrewshire UNISON branch in Scotland has a Holocaust Memorial project remembering the only Scot who died in a Nazi concentration camp – Jane Haining. UNISON Renfrewshire branch secretary Mark Ferguson said: 'The memorial work we’ve done over the past few years on Jane Haining has been very humbling, and having the opportunity to build a relationship with her family has been so special. We are working on telling the story of someone who lived and worked in our community for a long time, and it’s an incredible story.'

I recently spoke with them about helping with a proposed education pack to support the project's development. I had heard about her story, which has been covered in the Scottish media and was the subject of a BBC documentary. However, for more detail, I turned to Mary Miller's book.

Jane Haining (1897 – 1944) was a Scottish missionary for the Church of Scotland in Budapest, Hungary, who was recognised in 1997 by Yad Vashem in Israel as Righteous Among the Nations for having risked her life to help Jews during the Holocaust. 

Jane came from a small village near Dumfries and went to work in Paisley, hence the link to the Renfrewshire UNISON branch. She was active in the Church of Scotland, and in 1932, she was appointed matron for the girls' hostel attached to its Jewish mission school in Budapest. While there was anti-semitism in Hungary driven by its own fascist party, refugees poured into the country from Germany. Hungary adopted its own anti-Jewish legislation in 1938, along the lines of the Nazi Nuremberg laws. This process accelerated with the outbreak of war, even though Hungary was neutral. Jane was advised to return to Scotland, but she decided to stay to care for the children. 

In December 1941, Britain declared war on Hungary in response to its role in the invasion of the Soviet Union. This made it even more difficult for the school, but Jane continued with her work. That all changed when the Nazis marched into Budapest on 19 March 1944, to stop Hungary pulling out of the war. Jane was denounced by a local Hungarian Nazi to the Gestapo, who arrested her. She was sent to Auschwitz, arriving there on 15 May 1944. We know very little about her time in the camps, and her last letter is dated 15 July 1944. She was probably murdered on 17 July in the gas chambers. The Germans claimed she died in the hospital. 430,000 Hungarian Jews were deported and murdered.

While she is known as the Scot who died at Auschwitz, it is also essential to understand what she did with her life and those she helped. As one of her friends put it, 'If we can do anything in any small measure that Jane did, our world will be a different and much better place.'