Cornerstone No. 188, page 9
Jane Haining to be commemorated in Holocaust Me-
morial Center
A Scot who died in Auschwitz is to be officially honoured in her adopted city 73
years after her death.
Jane Haining will be the focus of a new exhibition in the Holocaust Memorial
Centre in Budapest, Hungary. Spokesman Zoltan Toth-Heinemann said the
Church of Scotland missionary, who refused to return home and gave up her
life to protect Jewish school girls during the Second World War, was a “unique
and important” figure. But he admitted that the general telling of her story in
Budapest had been “neglected” for too long.
Mr Toth-Heinemann said he was determined to ensure that as many people as
possible learn about the Scottish Mission boarding school matron, who was
posthumously honoured by the UK Government for “preserving life in the face
of persecution.”
Miss Haining, who grew up in Dunscore near Dumfries, was arrested and
eventually taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Nazi-occu-
pied Poland in 1944 where she died at the age of 47.
Mr Toth-Heinemann and his colleague Dr Gabor Maklari visited Scotland to seek
inspiration for the temporary exhibition, which is going on show in the autumn.
They visited Dunscore Parish Church, the National Library of Scotland and
Qu een’s Park Church in Glasgow, where the missionary worshipped before
moving to Budapest in 1932.