MSPs backing fight for Scots heroine of Holocaust to be honoured

Published on Tuesday 27 January 2009 20:59

SUPPORT is growing in Holyrood for The Scotsman's campaign for a Scottish hero of the Holocaust to be given a posthumous honour.

More than a dozen MSPs from across the political spectrum have already pledged to back a motion calling for Jane Haining, a Church of Scotland missionary who lost her life in the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, to be honoured for her bravery.

Ms Haining, of Dumfries, died in 1944 after rejecting advice to return to Scotland and leave the Jewish orphans she cared for in Budapest.

A Labour MSP, Ken Macintosh, plans to put down a motion in the Scottish Parliament calling for a change in the UK government's rules on honours, which say they can be given posthumously only if the death was in combat.

Mr Macintosh's motion will back calls already made by The Scotsman, the Holocaust Education Trust, the First Minister, Alex Salmond, and the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, Tavish Scott, in calling for a change in the rules to allow such an honour in exceptional circumstances.

The trust aims to get an award for Ms Haining and five other British heroes who have been recognised in Israel as Righteous Among the Nations, but have never been formally recognised at home.

"I have been delighted with the support for this motion," Mr Macintosh said. "I hope as many MSPs as possible will sign to send a very strong message from Holyrood that Jane Haining should be honoured."

Meanwhile, in Westminster 111 MPs have signed an early day motion backing the proposal for posthumously honouring the six heroes of the Holocaust, including Tommy Noble, a Scottish soldier who helped to feed and hide a Jewish girl in a PoW camp.

Almost 1,000 people have signed a petition on the Downing Street website supporting the campaign.

Mike Gilson, the editor of The Scotsman, said: "Jane Haining's story is one of remarkable courage. It is only right that she should be honoured in this country and there should be a change in the rules so this can happen. The support the campaign has received so far is very encouraging.''

Yesterday in Holyrood, Holocaust Memorial Day was marked with a visit by one of Auschwitz's most famous survivors.

Eva Schloss, the stepsister of Anne Frank, whose diary of her two years in hiding has become one of the best-known stories of the war, described her traumatic experiences to members of the Jewish community, schoolchildren, politicians and religious representatives.

"To share this story with people all over the world is very important," Ms Schloss said.

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JANE Haining is presumed to have died in the gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on 16 August, 1944. She had been taken there along with the dozens of Jewish orphans from Hungary who she had been looking after.

Ms Haining refused to leave the children, even though she could have returned to Scotland at the outbreak of the Second World War and again when the Nazis invaded Hungary in March 1944.

"If these children need me in the days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in the days of darkness," she said.

Ms Haining left her home in Dumfries in 1932 for the mission in Budapest, where she had responsibility for some 50 children.

She was on holiday in Cornwall when war broke out but returned to the mission, where she was eventually arrested by the Gestapo in April 1944.

There is a stained glass window memorial to Ms Haining in Queen's Park Church, Glasgow.