IN this week of 1897, a true Scottish heroine was born in what is now Dumfries and Galloway. Jane Mathison Haining, the only Scottish woman to be murdered by the Nazis in the Auschwitz extermination camp, was born on June 6, 1897, at Lochanhead Farm in Dunscore.

She was the fifth child and youngest of three daughters of farmer Thomas John Haining and his wife Jane, née Mathison. Jane’s mother died during childbirth in 1902, leaving Thomas to bring up the remaining four children, their twin sons James and Thomas having died in 1893, aged just four-and-a-half months. Further tragedy visited the family when Jane’s younger sister Helen passed away in 1904, one year and eight months after her mother died giving birth to her.

Growing up on the farm, Jane worshipped at Craig Church in Dunscore, a congregation of the United Free Church, and also attended the village school where she was an outstanding pupil, winning a scholarship to Dumfries Academy. Her elder sister Margaret was already at the academy and the two girls lived in Moat Hostel for girls.

By the time she left the academy she had won 41 prizes, with high marks in English, Latin, Maths, French and German – the latter achievement would play a part in her future life. She was named dux in her final year.

In 1915 she started a business course at the Athenaeum Commercial College in Glasgow, which led on to her first job as a clerk and then secretary at J & P Coats Ltd, the famous thread manufacturers in Paisley. While living in Pollokshields in Glasgow she attended Queen’s Park West United Free Church, now Queen’s Park Church of Scotland. She volunteered to teach Sunday school and from her own wages she bought the children cream buns to reward them for their attendance.

In 1927, at a meeting of the Glasgow Jewish Mission, she heard the Rev Dr George MacKenzie talk about his missionary work. Instantly she decided to become a missionary and soon began studying domestic science and housekeeping to gain the qualifications for missionary work. She soon gained work and moved to Manchester as a matron.

While there she saw an advertisement in the Kirk’s Life And Work magazine for the post of matron at the church’s Jewish Mission School in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. The school taught Christian and Jewish girls, hoping to convert the latter after they turned 18, and was a respected institution in the city.

The mission committee asked Jane to attend St Colm’s Women’s Missionary College in Edinburgh for further training and she qualified in June 1932 having a dedication service before heading off to Budapest to become matron at the combined girls’ home and school. She soon proved a hit with pupils and colleagues alike, with one former pupil remembering her as giving “all the love that she could”. In all, there were 400 children at the school, aged between four and 16, and they were mostly Jewish.

Jane grew to love Hungary and Budapest and soon became fluent in the language. Added to her German, which she had studied constantly, her language skills meant she could converse with the girls and their parents, and soon she had the reputation of being the best matron the mission had ever had.

Jane was actually home on holiday in Cornwall in September 1939 when the Second World War broke out. Without a second thought for her own safety, she immediately returned to Budapest.

In 1940, under pressure from Hitler, the Kingdom of Hungary joined the Axis powers. The Church of Scotland instructed its missionaries in Budapest to return home for their own safety as soon as possible. Jane wrote back to them: “If these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness?”

Despite growing restrictions on Jews and Jewish lives, Jane lived with her girls in increasing austerity in Budapest until the early months of 1944, when Hungary sought an armistice with the Allies. Hitler was furious and German forces promptly invaded Hungary. Immediately the Nazis began to restrict and deport Jews, who were ordered to wear yellow stars on their clothing as a mark of antisemitic hatred. Inspired by their matron, the Christian girls in Jane’s school all sewed on yellow stars for their daily walk.

Jane was asked to leave but she refused once more. It was an act of loving defiance that would cost Jane her life. In furtherance of the Final Solution, the Nazis deported more than 430,000 Jews from Hungary to extermination camps – all but 15,000 of them went to Auschwitz-Birkenau, with 90% of the deported Jews being killed in the gas chambers on arrival.

The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre records what happened next: “On April 25, 1944, two Gestapo men appeared at the mission, searched her office and gave her 15 minutes to get her things ready. She was taken first to Foutca prison for questioning.

Eight charges were laid against her, including working among Jews, visiting British prisoners of war and listening to the BBC.

Attempts were made to secure her release, as letters by Bishop László Ravasz of the Reformed Church in Hungary later showed. Even the leaders of the Hungarian government interceded but to no avail.

Jane was deported to Auschwitz, where she became prisoner number 79467 and was forced to endure hard labour. Her last message to friends was a postcard asking for food. She ended her letter with the words: “There is not much to report here on the way to heaven.”

Starved, weak and seriously ill, Jane Haining died in the Auschwitz hospital block on August 16, 1944, aged 47. The German authorities sent a death certificate via neutral Switzerland. It stated: “Miss Haining, who was arrested on account of justified suspicion of espionage against Germany, died in hospital, July 17, of cachexia following intestinal catarrh.”

In 2017, an exhibition about Jane opened in the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest, followed by a permanent exhibition in Dunscore Church. There is also a memorial cairn in the village and there is a stained glass window to her memory in Queen’s Park Church. She is the only Scot recorded as “Righteous Among The Nations” at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem.

Anyone wanting to find out more about Jane should read Mary Miller’s book Jane Haining: A Life Of Love And Courage, while Stuart A Paterson’s poem In Days Of Darkness will move you.