1. Jane Mathison Haining was a Scottish missionary for the Church of Scotland in Budapest, Hungary, who was recognized in 1997 by Yad Vashem in Israel as Righteous Among the Nations for having risked her life to help Jews during the Holocaust.
24 Facts About Jane Haining
1. 2.
Mathison, herself from a farming family, died in 1902 while giving birth to the couple's sixth child, when Jane Haining was about five.
3.
Jane Haining's father remarried in January 1922 and died that June.
4.
Jane Haining grew up as a member of the evangelical Craig Church in Dunscore, part of the United Free Church of Scotland.
5.
Jane Haining graduated as the school dux, one of 41 school prizes she was awarded, and left with Highers in English, French, German, Latin and Mathematics.
6.
Jane Haining took a temporary post in Glasgow, then in Manchester as a matron.
7.
Jane Haining left for Budapest the next day, seven months before Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933.
8.
Jane Haining made efforts to have part of the building converted to club rooms, so that the evangelical work could continue for girls who had left the school, as most did when they were 14 or 15.
9.
When World War II broke out on 3 September 1939, Jane Haining was on holiday in Cornwall with Margit Prem, the Hungarian head of the mission's elementary school.
10.
Jane Haining is reported to have cut up her leather suitcase to repair the girls' shoes.
11.
Jane Haining was at first held in a house used by the Gestapo in the Buda Hills, before being moved to Fo utca prison.
12.
Jane Haining's friends took her weekly parcels of food and clean underwear.
13.
Jane Haining's friends arrived at the Fo utca prison with food and clean underwear, but she had gone.
14.
Jane Haining said she had been too busy to occupy herself with politics.
15.
Jane Haining endeared herself to all her fellow-prisoners and everybody wept when she left.
16.
Ravasz spoke to or met with the State Secretary Miklos Mester and the Hungarian prime minister, who, at the time of Jane Haining's arrest, was Dome Sztojay.
17.
Jane Haining sent a postcard from Auschwitz, written in German, to Margit Prem of the mission school.
18.
Jane Haining's superiors had three times insisted on her to go home, but she had always declined.
19.
Jane Haining's Bible was found in the mission home after the war, and is on display in the mission building.
20.
Jane Haining's name is inscribed on a wall of honour in the Garden of the Righteous in Jerusalem.
21.
Jane Haining was the second Scot; Tommy Noble, a Scottish POW, was made Righteous Among the Nations in 1988.
22.
In 2016, a memorial event attended by former pupils of the mission school was held in Hungary and in 2017 Jane Haining was again honoured by the city of Budapest in a new exhibition at its Holocaust Memorial Centre.
23.
Karine Polwart, the Scottish singer-songwriter, wrote a song about Jane Haining entitled "Baleerie Baloo" for her 2006 album, Scribbled in Chalk.
24.
In 2016 Jane Haining was named in the video accompanying "Girl ", a Scottish women's anthem by Sharon Martin.