Janina is spending her summer holidays in a vi...

Janina is spending her summer holidays in a village called Crossways. She lives there with Stefa, who is taking care of her, in two small rooms in a spacious house. The rest of the rooms are occupied by two other families - one consisting of a nurse and two small boys, the other occupied by the two daughters and the son of the owner of the house - Christine and Janice and Tadek.

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.