I have been fascinated by this largely forgotten Scottish heroine for a few years now and am currently engaged in researching material for a play about her. Does anyone have any information about Jane Haining, other than what is printed below? If so I would very much like to hear from you. I can be contacted at johnnicollendeavour@yahoo.co.uk. Thank you.
Jane was born in the last years of the nineteenth century in a little village called Dunscore in the South West of Scotland. She was a more than able pupil at school, becoming Dux (top pupil of the year) at Dumfries Academy.
After a successful career in Commerce she went on to train to be a Missionary and secured a position as Matron of the Church OF Scotland Mission in Budapest.
She was home in Scotland on holiday when World War 2 broke out and, against the advice of family and friends and her bossses, she went back to Budapest to be with her children.
She was gassed in Auschwitz on the seventeenth of July 1944.
At one point Jane was made to sew The Star of David onto the clothes of the children in her care.
POEM FOR JANE HAINING
The stars fell out of the sky
and, if it had been possible,
you would have gathered them up,
one by one,
and stationed them again
in their rightful quarters.
And, as before,
their shining would have shamed
the darkness all around,
but, instead, they made you
sew them into all those
little coats and dresses,
forcing you to chain
all the bright and shimmering
to the dull clod
of a poisoned earth.
Then, at the dying breath
of that great evil,
just when hope -
fragile as a Spring flower -
broke ground,
you were sucked into the maw
and in your presence
the dark around you
was shamed into nothingness.
Poem by John R. Nicoll.
