Mundell to lead Holocaust memorial

David Mundell will lead a Holocaust memorial march in Budapest this weekend in honour of a Scottish missionary who died protecting her Hungarian Jewish pupils.

The Secretary of State for Scotland will be among thousands of participants in the torchlit March of the Living, an annual event in Hungary which commemorates the more than 500,000 Jews from the country who were killed by the Nazis.

This year’s march will honour Jane Haining, a teacher at the Scottish Mission School in Budapest during the Second World War.

She helped women to flee the growing Nazi threat by helping them find jobs as domestic servants.

Miss Haining, originally from Dunscore in Dumfriesshire, was eventually arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and taken to the Auschwitz Birkenau extermination camp where she later died.

Mr Mundell said: “It is a huge honour, and a great privilege, to be asked to lead the March of the Living to mark Hungary’s Holocaust Memorial Day.

“The Holocaust was undoubtedly one of the darkest times in human history, but the courage and personal sacrifice of individuals like Jane Haining give us hope for the future.”