[4][5] When German forces occupied Budapest in 1944, Haller’s parents feared for her safety and brought her to the Scottish Mission Boarding School (St. Columba’s Church of Scotland).

When the missionaries were recalled and ordered to return to Scotland, Haining stayed to help the Jewish students and families.

[6] According to Haller, as the Jews in the mission school were being rounded up to be taken to the ghetto, she turned to a Hungarian Nazi soldier and stated, “I am too young and too beautiful to die.” She then grabbed the hand of a 10-year-old neighbor, whom she promised to keep safe, telling him, “Run!”[3] Jane Haining was sent to do forced labor at Auschwitz in May 1944; she died that July.

[7] In 2014, Haller visited a church where Haining is honored in Glasgow, to pay tribute, and she was interviewed in a BBC documentary.

[8] Eva Haller has been an advocate for social justice since the age of thirteen, when she would sneak out with her brother, Janos, to assist him in distributing anti-Hitler pamphlets throughout Budapest.

Janos, who was one of the Jewish Partisans fighting the Nazis, was killed as he crossed the Yugoslavian border to join Tito’s army.

In her brother’s memory, she served as Producer and Advisor to the film FOUR WINTERS, by Julia Mintz, about the Jewish Partisans who fought and disrupted the German army and its collaborators.

[10] With the help of a former boyfriend, who worked in the passport office, and some funding from the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society (HIAS), Haller joined distant cousins living in Ecuador.

[15] Three years after Murray Roman’s death in 1984, Eva met Yoel Haller, MD, an OBGYN who shared her dedication for social innovation and activism.