Mrs. Bloch asked for volunteers to help at the...

Mrs. Bloch asked for volunteers to help at the local orphanage. She was looking for girls who knew how to sew. Janina could do that very well and was very eager to help. She was longing to do some useful work and put an end to leading a useless life. She wanted to help other people.
Her idea met with stony opposition from her parents - 'You will surely pick up some disease from those children', ' don't you understand that you are our only treasure, the only reason for our existence?'.
Janina clenched her fists, suffocating with anger - the hated, paralysing love was as great a burden on her as on her parents.

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.