This week I read that the handwritten will of a Scottish
missionary was discovered in a box in the archives of the Church of Scotland’s
World Mission Council in Edinburgh. This is news for multiple reasons! First,
the woman, Jane Haining, died in Auschwitz after refusing to abandon Jewish
girls in her care at a missionary school in Budapest. Second, the box
containing Jane's will also held 70 rare photos of the girls' school and documents
revealing efforts to secure her release from the Nazi death camp. Jane was in
charge of 315 girls, many of whom were Jewish, since the early 1930s. As war
broke out in Europe, the church demanded that she come home to Scotland, but she refused saying, "If
these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in
days of darkness?". Jane refused to
leave the children, and did all that she could to keep them safe. The article
stated that she even sewed yellow stars on to the clothes of Jewish girls on
Gestapo orders.
In 1944, Jane was arrested by the Gestapo on suspicion of
spying, and by May, she was in Auschwitz. By August, Jane had died and her
death certificate was sent to the Church of Scotland. Jane sacrificed her life to
protect the Jewish girls in her school in Budapest, and she received many
honors after her death including: a Hero
of the Holocaust medal by the UK government in 2010, and she is the only Scot
named as “righteous among the nations” – non-Jews who risked their lives to
save Jews from the Nazis – by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.
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| Jane's will Photo Courtesy of {theguardian.com} |
Bringing this back to archives - it is interesting to note that
once the will, documents, and photos were found in the church archive, the
church sent the box to the National Library of Scotland. We just learned
about this practice in class last night. One of the values held by archivists
is professionalism and responsibility - sending this important discovery to a
larger and better equipped archive is best practice, and shows that the church
archives respects both the profession and the collection itself. In closing
I'll leave you with a quote from the article which really resonated with me. Rev
Susan Brown of the World Mission Council said: “The previously unseen documents
and photographs have, for me, evoked fresh feelings of awe about this already
tremendously moving, inspiring and important story. To hear of Jane’s
determination to continue to care for ‘her’ girls, even when she knew it put
her own life at risk, is truly humbling.”
You can find the article, Will belonging to Scot who
died in Auschwitz found in church archives, HERE.
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