Scottish heroine helped women flee the Nazis

A Scottish Holocaust heroine saved many Jews from death by helping them emigrate to Britain, a new book has revealed.
Jane Haining assisted Hungarian women in securing jobs as domestic servants five years before she was taken to the Auschwitz Birkenau extermination camp where she died in 1944Jane Haining assisted Hungarian women in securing jobs as domestic servants five years before she was taken to the Auschwitz Birkenau extermination camp where she died in 1944
Jane Haining assisted Hungarian women in securing jobs as domestic servants five years before she was taken to the Auschwitz Birkenau extermination camp where she died in 1944

Jane Haining, a teacher at the Scottish Mission School in Budapest, Hungary, helped women to flee the growing Nazi threat by helping them get jobs as domestic servants.

She helped the women for five years before she was taken to the Auschwitz Birkenau extermination camp where she died in 1944.

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Miss Haining, originally from Dunscore in Dumfries and Galloway, was arrested by the Gestapo on eight charges, including working among Jews in her care at the Scottish Mission School in Budapest, Hungary.

The Mission started a Servants’ Registry to help with emigration .

Miss Haining trained the women by teaching domestic management and giving lectures on social life in Britain.

Mary Miller, author of ‘A Life of Love and courage’ by Mary Miller, a new book being launched tonight at Queen’s Park Govanhill Parish Church in Glasgow where Miss Haining worked as a Sunday school teacher, wrote: “Jewish refugees from countries swallowed up by the Nazis were pouring into Budapest, still believing the situation of Jews to be less life-threatening in Hungary than in the surrounding countries.

“They believed by then that the only way to save the Jews was through emigration, and by February 1939 the Mission was putting on courses in farming, cattle breeding and other subjects to help refugees to get jobs abroad.”

The demand for such training saw queues outside the Mission building in Budapest.

Haining never returned to the Scottish Mission and died at the camp - branded prisoner 79467 - aged 47.

Following the outbreak of war in 1939, Haining, spent years protecting the pupils from the increasing danger facing Jews in Europe.

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But the dangerous flashpoint came in March 1944 when the Nazis invaded Hungary.

She was betrayed by the Mission cook’s son-in-law, a future SS soldier called Schreder, whom she caught stealing scarce food meant for the girls. .

Miss Haining was arrested in April 1944. Former pupil Agnes Rostas, who witnessed the incident, revealed that her haunting last words to sobbing children were “Don’t worry, I’ll be back by lunch”.

She never returned to the Scottish Mission, where she worked between 1932-44, and die, age 47, in the notorious camp in Nazi-occupied Poland – branded prisoner 79467.

l ‘Jane Haining - A Life of Love and Courage, by Mary Miller £14.99, Birlinn Books from 11 April,

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