Jane Haining
One woman stood out among the tide of human misery shuffling from the railway cattle trucks into the sheds at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. Jane's only surviving relative, her half-sister Nan O'Brien, who at 77 made the exhausting pilgrimage to Auschwitz for the first time in August 2000, has revealed that she, too, could have died with Jane. *
In the Nazi death camp, bespectacled Jane Haining's broad face, fair skin and bright blue eyes marked her out instantly as a non-Jew.
Brave Jane was a Church of Scotland missionary, condemned to the gas chambers for doing the same as Dr Oskar Schindler - trying to save the lives of Jews in their darkest hour.
Many stories of heroism and sacrifice have come out of the holocaust, but few rival that of the middle-aged missionary from a village in Dumfriesshire who chose to die with the Jewish orphans she looked after when she could have escaped.
Her courage earned her a place in history as the only Scot honoured as the Righteous among Nations by Israel.
One Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, now living in Glasgow, declared; "I think Jane Haining was braver than us, because as a Christian she could have got away. We didn't have a choice about being there, she did. We were not heroes or martyrs - she and her like were because they chose to be there. They didn't just talk principles, they died for their principles."
She recalled; 'I met her on her last visit home in 1939. She needed help with the children and I was preparing to go to Budapest with her, but then war broke out. I was only 17 and was told not to go. She was quite determined not to come home, although the rest of the mission did. She said she would stay with the children at their time of need.'
Martyrdom was not something farmer's daughter Jane ever sought.
Born near Dunscore, Dumfriesshire, in 1897, she lost her mother at the age of five and grew up a determined, capable woman, dedicated to the Kirk.
She was also extremely bright, Dux of Dumfries Academy, she worked her way up to become senior secretary of J & P Coates, the threadmakers in Paisley.
Jane never married. Her energies went instead into the church and in 1932 she gave up her career to become a missionary in Hungary. When war broke out, she was the matron of the girl's home in the Budapest Mission of the Church of Scotland.
Famous for her broad Scots accent and her remarkably blue eyes, she was popular with the 400 children, a mix of Christians and Jews, attending the school.
Many were orphans, from broken or poverty-stricken homes, while others were sent simply because they got an excellent education from the Scots.
In letters home, her compassion for the little ones she called 'poor wee lambs' was evident in a Europe already fractured with war.
In one letter, she wrote; 'We have one nice little mite who is an orphan and is coming to school for the first time. She seems to be a lonely wee soul and needs lots of love. We shall see what we can do to make life a little happier for her.'
Another letter read; 'We have one new little six-year-old, an orphan without a mother or a father. She is such a pathetic wee soul to look at and I fear, poor lamb, has not been in too good surroundings before she came to us..... she certainly does look as though she needs heaps and heaps of love.'
During the dark days of 1938 and 1939, the numbers of Jewish refugees coming to the school increased - children fleeing from Nazi tyranny in Austria.
But in Hungary, which was still neutral, hostility towards the Jews had started to rise and Jane became aware the Church of Scotland Mission had become a place of sanctuary. She wrote; 'What a ghastly feeling it must be to know that no one wants you and to feel that your neighbours literally grudge you your daily bread.'
By 1940, Hitler had invaded Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Norway and it was plain that worse was to come - but Jane was committed to remaining in Budapest.
Back in Edinburgh, the Church of Scotland urgently instructed its missionaries to come home - but Jane refused to budge, saying she thought she would be safer in Budapest. But friends said later that personal safety never entered her mind. She intended to stay whether she was safe or not, because she loved Hungary and she loved the litle girls she cared for.
Her sister Nan said; 'It was no surprise that she refused to come back when war was declared. She would never have had a moment's happiness if she had come home and left the children.'
During the dark years of the war, Jane drew on her inner strength to shelter and protect the little Jewish children who were increasingly under threat.
An elderly Jew from Budapest, now living in Scotland, remembers visiting the mission during those awful days.
She said, 'Jewish parents put their girls there for an English education. As things got worse, they put them in there hoping that, being under the protection of the Scottish Mission, they would escape. It was against the Jewish beliefs, but probably Jane Haining struck an unspoken bargain - she would save the children's souls for Christ and save their lives at the same time. What parent would not have his child convert to save them from being raped and destroyed?'
It is debatable whether by this time Jane cared about converting the children.
She just wanted to save them from the horror that she suspected lay ahead.
No one knows if she actually helped anyone escape, but she negotiated with the Hungarian Reform Church to ensure that school went on as usual and the workers were paid.
Her only comfort was listening to the BBC radio broadcasts but in March 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary and the sanctuary of the Scottish Mission was violated.
Jane was ordered to sew yellow Stars of David on to the clothes of the little girls in her care. She wept as she worked.
She also, disciplined the son-in-law of the school cook, who was a member of the Hungarian Nazi Party, for eating the girls' food. This led to a knock on her door early in May from two Gestapo officers.
They searched her office and her bedroom, gave her 15 minutes to get ready and took her away. Jane was calm and told a friend she would be back soon. She was taken to Fo-utca prison where, among other things, she was charged with working among Jews, weeping as she sewed on stars, and listening to the BBC.
After three weeks, her friends arrived at the prison with a food parcel, but Jane had already been transported to Auschwitz in Poland.
Her friends recieved two letters from her. One said, with a heartbreaking awareness of her impending fate; 'There is not much to report from here. Here on the way to Heaven are mountains, but not as beautiful or as high as ours.'
Her last message was a postcard asking for food.
The Germans tried to claim she died in hospital of 'intestinal catarrh' - their code for starvation. But fellow prisoners who survived say she died in the gas chambers.
In three months in the summer of 1944, nearly 1,300,000 people - 12,000 a day - were liquidated in Auschwitz, among them Jane Haining, prisoner No;79467. She was 47 years old.
Ben Helfgott, a concentration camp survivor, who was instrumental in getting Jewish recognition for Jane, said; 'When the children were taken away she went with them to Auschwitz. She was not able to save them, but she looked after them. What she did was a supreme act of mercy and kindness.'
