A brass plaque has been laid in honour of a Church of Scotland school matron who died in Auschwitz during the Second World War.
Jane Haining worked at the Scottish Mission School in Budapest, Hungary, starting her role there in 1932. The school had around 400 students, including boarders aged 6 to 16 years old. Some of the students were Jews.
Haining was arrested in April 1944 after the cook’s son-in-law informed the Germans that she was hiding Jews.
According to former student, Agnes Rostas, as she was being taken away Haining told the crying students, "Don't worry, I'll be back by lunch."
In fact, Haining was imprisoned before being transported to Auschwitz with Hungarian Jews the following month.
She was pressed into slave labour and a few months later was dead at the age of 47. Her official death certificate stated that she died of cachexia following intestinal catarrh, although it is likely she was killed in the gas chambers.
She is the only Scot to be declared “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem. The term refers to non-Jews who, at great personal risk, attempted to help or protect Jews during the Holocaust, with Oskar Schindler being perhaps the most famous example.
The new memorial to Haining was placed outside the former St Stephen’s Church building in Stockbridge, Edinburgh, and is part of a Europe-wide project to honour those who suffered under National Socialism.
The memorial is a 'Stolperstein' or 'stumbling block' created by the German artist Gunter Demnig. 116,000 such memorials have been laid across 31 European countries, with Haining’s the first in Scotland.
Rt Rev Rosie Frew, Moderator of the Church of Scotland General Assembly, spoke at the unveiling of the memorial.
"We are delighted that a ‘Stolperstein' has been laid in memory of Jane Haining, who was the matron of the Scottish Mission School in Budapest in the 1930s and 1940s.”
Haining, she said, had also helped Jewish women learn domestic service management skills in order for them to move more easily to the safety of Britain.
"An inspirational woman of deep faith, she was fully aware of the extraordinary risks she was taking but repeatedly refused Church of Scotland pleas to leave the Hungarian capital and return home to Scotland as the war engulfed Europe," Rev Frew continued.
"Jane was determined to continue doing her duty and stick to her post and famously said ‘If these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness?'.
"She was simultaneously an ordinary and extraordinary woman and her story is one of heroism and personal sacrifice and reminds us that when we feel powerless, there is always something that we can do.
"It is a fine example of service over self-interest and we hope that this honour, the first of its kind in Scotland, will help keep her memory alive for generations to come."
Also present at the ceremony were representatives of the Haining family and of Scotland’s Jewish community.
Haining has also been honoured with a Heroine of the Holocaust medal by the British government, a stained-glass window at the church she attended, Queen’s Park Govanhill Church, Glasgow, and a street named after her - Haining Park in Midlothian.
