In October the rumours of massacres in Vilno r...

In October the rumours of massacres in Vilno reached the ghetto but were dismissed very soon - 'such things could not happen here'. There were nearly half a million Jews in the ghetto which worked out roughly at fourteen persons per room.

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.