Jane Haining's bravery in face of Nazi evil is an eternal reminder to us all
Scottish missionary Jane Haining refused to abandon the Jewish children in her care and went with them to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp
“If these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness?” With these words, Jane Haining rejected an order to Scottish missionaries in Hungary in 1940 to return home as the Second World War intensified.
Instead, she remained the matron of the Scottish Mission girls’ boarding school in Budapest, where many of the children in her care were Jewish orphans. In 1944, she was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp along with large numbers of Hungarian Jews.
Two months later, she was dead. In a message to friends, her last, she wrote: “There is not much to report here on the way to heaven.” Now her name has been added to a special memorial wall at Auschwitz, in a section devoted to hundreds of prisoners for whom no registration photographs were taken.
At a time when the far-right is mobilising once again, the humanity and bravery that cost Haining her life provides an eternal reminder of just how evil the Nazis were and why their ideological descendants must always be opposed.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.