Janina David

Janina David (born 1930 in Poland) is a Holocaust survivor and a British writer and translator. She escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, hiding in a Polish Catholic household and a convent until she was able to reach Paris in 1946 and then emigrated to Australia, alone, in 1948.

A year after moving to London in 1958, she started work on a three-volume autobiography, the first volume of which―A Square of Sky―went on to be a best-seller in Germany, a set text in German schools, a play and a film. In 1982 she was awarded Germany’s Goldener Gong together with the film’s director, Franz Peter Wirth, and its lead actor, Dana Vávrová. Since 1978, she has worked as an author and translator of children’s and young people’s books, and of radio plays, for the BBC and others. Her other titles include A Touch of Earth and Light over the Water.