Bid to trace girls saved by Scots heroine of Auschwitz

SHE is seen as ‘Scotland’s Schindler’ for sacrificing her life at Auschwitz to stay with the Jewish schoolgirls in her care.

School matron Jane Haining was killed at the Nazi death camp after three times refusing the call to return home to Scotland for her own safety.

Arrested by the Gestapo in Hungary, the missionary was punished for ‘working amongst the Jews’ and weeping when the orphans in her care were forced to wear yellow stars.

Now the Church of Scotland is trying to trace those surviving schoolgirls for whom the 47-yearold school matron died.

Photographs of her with Jewish schoolgirls in Budapest have been taken to Hungary after they were discovered in a box containing Miss Haining’s will in Edinburgh.

Reverend Ian Alexander, secretary of the World Mission Council of the Church of Scotland, said: ‘We are very hopeful that we will

‘They need me in days of darkness’

have the chance to meet some of Miss Haining’s former pupils, who are, in part, still alive today thanks to her bravery and dedication.

‘We have brought out with us some of the photographs... perhaps someone might see their younger selves in them.’

Miss Haining’s story is reminiscent of Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews who he employed in his factory.

The quiet farmer’s daughter, from Dunscore, Dumfriesshire, refused to leave the Jewish Mission School in Budapest after the war broke out, stating: ‘If these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness?’

Alice Hyslop, a relative of Miss Haining, who lives in Dumfries, said: ‘Jane was a wonderful person and I don’t think anyone in the world could do any better, dedicate their lives any better.’

Most of the 70 photographs show the missionary in happier times with fellow staff and their girls on the shore of Lake Balaton, where summer holidays were spent in a rented villa.

Miss Haining died in 1944 after three months of hard labour. Exprisoners say it is likely she was sent to the gas chambers.