Janina together with her mother and grandparen...

  • YES
  • Janina together with her mother and grandparents spend the month of the Warsaw bombing in a shelter. When it comes to an end they make there way back to their home town. Unfortunately they don't stay there long either due to the harassment towards the Jews, which had already started. The Germans take all their beautiful and valuable furniture out fo their apartment. Soon after that they arrest Janina's grandfather and let him go under the condition that he and his family move to Warsaw.

  • 1939-09-00
  • 1940-00-00
  • september 1939
  • winter 1939/1940
  • before formation of the ghetto
  • German operations, private life / daily life
  • atmosphere, the rich, private life
  • At the age of nine Janina David was leading a sheltered life with her prosperous Jewish family in Poland. One year later they were all facing starvation in the Warsaw ghetto.
    In the memoirs of wartime childhood Janina David describes the family's struggle against insurmountable odds. When it becomes clear that none of them was likely to survive, the thirteen-year old girl was smuggled out of the ghetto to live with family friends - a Polish woman and her German - born husband. When their home becomes too dangerous, she was sent with false identity papers to a Catholic convent, where she lived in constant fear of being discovered.

  • 60-92
  • Related people:

    • David Janina

      She was born in Poland, the only child of a middle-class Jewish family. She lost her parents during the war years an...

    • David Celia

      Janina David's mother. She was raised in a wealthy family. She had studied in Warsaw.

    • Unknown Babcia Autorki

      Janina David's grandmother.

    • Unknown Dziadek Autorki

      Janina David\'s grandfather. During the bombing of Warsaw in 1939, he organised the fire brigade.