An amazing story of courage and faith in the face of unspeakable horrors.
Via Fox News.
A Holocaust heroine’s last will and testament has been unearthed in church archives in Scotland, offering a glimpse into the incredible life of Jane Haining, who died in Auschwitz in 1944.
The handwritten will and previously unpublished photographs were recently found in a box in the Church of Scotland World Mission Council’s archives in Edinburgh.
Haining, a Christian missionary who spoke fluent German and Hungarian, moved to Budapest from her native Scotland in 1932 to work as matron at a church-run school that provided safe haven to Jewish schoolgirls, many of whom were orphans. Advised to return home during World War II, she remained in Budapest to care for her young charges.
Even though under surveillance, Haining managed to keep the girls safe for four years, but was betrayed by the cook’s son-in-law, whom she caught eating food intended for the girls. She was arrested by two Gestapo officers and accused of eight offenses, including working among Jews, weeping when seeing the girls attend class wearing yellow stars and visiting British prisoners of war. After her arrest, Haining was sent to Auschwitz, where she died with some of the girls from the Jewish Mission School. She was 47 years old.
Haining’s will, which says “to be opened in the event of my death,” is dated July 1942 and details who is to receive her wireless, typewriter, fur coat and watches….
Described as a Christian martyr by the Church of Scotland, Haining was awarded a Hero of the Holocaust medal by the U.K. Government in 2010, and has been dubbed “Scotland’s Schindler”. She has also been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel’s Yad Vashem holocaust memorial.
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