[2] After she escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943,[3] taking refuge with a Polish family of Henryk Rajski and then in a convent,[2] and her parents had died as victims of the Holocaust, she left Poland in 1946 and moved to Paris with an uncle.
In 1959 she began to write her three-volume autobiography, A Square of Sky, A Touch of Earth and Light over the Water.
[1][3] From 1978, she worked as an author and translator of children's and young people's books, and of radio plays, for the BBC and others.
[4] Franz Peter Wirth filmed Leo Lehmann's adaptation of the book A Square of Sky as the 1982 mini-series Ein Stück Himmel for the ARD and the leading actress Dana Vávrová became popular in Germany in the role of Janina David.
Janina David's autobiography A Square of Sky was the basis for a theatre show with the same title.