HAINING, Jane Mathison,‡ born Lochenhead, Dunscore, Dumfriesshire, 6 June 1897, died Auschwitz 17 July 1944. Missionary. Daughter of Jane Mathison, and Thomas Haining, farmer.

Jane Haining was brought up in a deeply religious home in rural Dumfriesshire and this early influence, together with the practical housekeeping skills learned of necessity after the death of her mother, may have prepared the ground for her future calling as a Church of Scotland missionary. Academically able, she attended Dumfries Academy and then worked as a secretary for the thread manufacturers, J. & P Coats, in Paisley. Her life outside work revolved around her church, the United Free Church, Queen's Park West in Pollockshields. After hearing a talk on missionary work among Eastern European Jews, she declared to a friend, ‘I have found my life's work’ (McDougall 1998, p.13). This conviction sustained her over four years of training and waiting for a suitable opportunity. It came in 1932 with her appointment as matron to the Jewish Mission Girls’ Home in Budapest. Having learned Hungarian, she won the trust of her young charges, many of whom came from difficult backgrounds and broken families.

Life was fulfilling for her, as she coped calmly with frequent domestic crises, but she became aware of increasing hostility towards Jews in Hungary and rising fear among her charges. She was on home leave when war was declared and she arranged to return immediately to Hungary. With the worsening situation, all staff were recalled, but she remained at her post despite repeated cables from Edinburgh. ‘If these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness?’, she wrote (McDougall 1998, p.24). The mission became a refuge and she was in grave danger by early 1944 when the Germans occupied Hungary. Denounced and arrested by the Gestapo, her care for her Jewish charges was enough to send her, in April 1944, by cattle truck to Auschwitz. Although passed fit for work and not gassed on arrival, by July she was dead. In 1997, she was posthumously recognised at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem as Righteous Amongst the Nations, the only Scot to be so honoured.