A RETIRED Glasgow teacher who played a major role in achieving international recognition for a Scotswoman who died in Auschwitz paid tribute to the "unsung heroine."

A RETIRED Glasgow teacher who played a major role in achieving international recognition for a Scotswoman who died in Auschwitz paid tribute to the "unsung heroine."

Morag Reid, 80, became fascinated by Jane Haining after hearing her story at Queen's Park Church, and features in a new BBC 1 Scotland documentary telling the story of Jane, who left Scotland to become the matron of a Hungarian girls' school, caring for Jewish children, in 1932.

The programme follows Sally Magnusson as she pieces together a picture of this quiet missionary.

Despite multiple pleas from the Church of Scotland for her return, Jane refused to abandon her post as World War Two broke out and then finally reached her doorstep when the Nazis invaded Hungary in March 1944.

Her decision to stay cost Jane her life. She died on July 17 1944 at the age of 47.

Sally traces Jane's story to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where with the influx of Hungarians into the camp put her in the middle of the largest mass murder in modern history.

Morag said: "I didn't really know too much about her, but in 1990 a minister in Budapest who was looking after things contacted the Church of Scotland and they wanted to arrange a memorial for Jane Haining.

"Because we were from her church they passed it on to us. From then on I just wanted to find out more and more about this woman."

l Jane Haining: The Scot Who Died in Auschwitz, BBC 1, tomorrow, 5.20pm