Hungarian exhibition focused on Scottish Auschwitz victim
A Scottish missionary who died in Auschwitz will be the focus of an exhibition in Hungary.
Jane Haining, a former school teacher from Dumfriesshire, travelled to Budapest in 1932 and became the matron at the Scottish Mission School, where more than 400 girls of mostly Jewish background were studying.
After the German invasion in 1944, she was taken to Auschwitz where she died aged 47. She later became first Scot acknowledged as Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in 1997.
Now she is the focus of a new exhibition, Common Fate, [Sorskozosseg] at the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest which opens today.
Scottish Secretary David Mundell said: “When we reflect on one of the darkest times in human history, it is the unimaginable courage of individuals like Jane Haining – a schoolteacher from Dunscore in Dumfriesshire – that provides us with hope and a belief in the compassion of others.
“Her dedication to her pupils was unwavering. After repeatedly refusing to leave Hungary, she wrote, ‘If these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness?’ In doing so, she gave her life to protect others from an evil that we can never allow to resurface.”
Ms Haining belonged to the small group of Holocaust victims who were given the choice to leave, but instead decided to stay and risk her life to save children.