Pupil of Scots Holocaust heroine tells of 'strict but fair' teacher

Magda Birraux’s moving testimony provides a deeper insight into the character of the woman who died in the infamous Auschwitz Birkenau extermination camp - prisoner 79467 - in July, 1944.

The 96-year-old attended the Scottish Mission boarding school in Budapest, Hungary between 1933-39.

Like so many former pupils, she regarded Miss Haining, who died aged 47, as her “second mother”.

Mrs Birraux said: “She was wonderful and looked after all of us very well, morning and night.

“She was even tempered, tall, strict but fair and always set a good example.

“Miss Haining had a very good sense of justice and always treated the pupils (Jews and Christians) equally.”

Mrs Birraux, the daughter of small business owners, enrolled as a boarder when she was 12.

She said the matron was a highly competent financial manager who arranged weekend excursions for “her” girls for “no extra charge”.

Mrs Birraux, a Hungarian Christian, said: “No girl was ever dismissed on account of her parents being unable to afford fees.

“Miss Haining kept uniforms which girls had outgrown and gave them to less well-off parents.”

Mrs Birraux, who now lives in Lausanne, Switzerland and attends the Scots Kirk, said the boarding house was run independently from the school, which had 12 teachers.

“The pupils were taught secretarial skills, English, German and Hungarian,” she recalled.

“In the winter we went skating, had gymnastics lessons, visited museums and went to the cinema to watch films starring Deanna Durbin, Shirley Temple and Judy Garland.

“Miss Haining took us for long walks in the woods and to tearooms for tea and cookies.

“She paid for everything.”

Mrs Birraux said Jewish children in Budapest were discriminated against from 1933 but the matron, who started working at the school in 1932, made sure that the girls in her charge “were not affected”.

“She loved these girls very much and was like a second mother to them,” she added.

The Church of Scotland advised missionaries to return home from Europe during the dark days of the Second World War.

Miss Haining repeatedly refused and wrote “if these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness”.

The matron managed to keep the children safe for four long years of hardship and clothing with yellow stars attached were never worn in the school.

It is said that she went to a market at 5am most days to buy food for the girls and cut up her leather luggage to make soles for their worn out shoes,

Miss Haining was eventually betrayed and reported to the Nazis by the cook's son-in-law whom she caught eating scarce food intended for the girls.

Mrs Birraux said: “She sacrificed her own life to protect the girls because if she left and returned to Scotland she would have been safe.”

Miss Haining, a former Dux at Dumfries Academy who was fluent in Hungarian and German, was arrested by two Gestapo officers at the Scottish Mission.

They gave her 15 minutes to gather her belongings and charged her with eight offences.

Miss Haining was detained at Foutca Prison in Buda, moved to a holding camp at Kistarcsa then transferred to Auschwitz Birkenau in Nazi occupied Poland in May 1944.

At least 1.1million people died in the Auschwitz concentration camps, some of which were equipped with gas chambers, but the true circumstances behind the matron's death are unclear.

According to her death certificate, Miss Haining died of "cachexia following intestinal catarrh".

In 1997, after an initiative from her former church Queen's Park West in Glasgow where two stained glass windows bear tribute to her “service and sacrifice”, and a 10-year investigation by an Israeli board, Miss Haining was named as Righteous Among the Nations in Jerusalem's sacred Yad Vashem.

She has a memorial cairn at Dunscore Church and was awarded a Hero of the Holocaust medal by the UK Government in 2010.

A new Heritage Centre is to be opened at the church later this year and will celebrate the life of Miss Haining.