Janina David

Janina Dawidowicz (born 19 March 1930 in Kalisz, Poland),^[1] better known as Janina David, is a Holocaust survivor and a British writer and translator.

Biography

Janina David was born as the only child to a Jewish Polish family, and moved with them to Warsaw in 1939.^[2] After she escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943,^[3] taking refuge with a German-Polish family and then in a convent,^[2] and her parents had died as victims of the holocaust, she left Poland in 1946 and moved to Paris with an uncle.^[1] She then emigrated to Australia where she completed school and studied at the University of Melbourne, gaining a B.A.. She then took Australian citizenship.^[1] In 1958, she moved to London, where she was a social worker in some hospitals. In 1959 she began to write her three-volume autobiography, A Square of Sky, A Touch of Earth and Light over the Water.^[1][3] Since 1978, she has been working as an author and translator of children's and young people's books, and of radio plays, for the BBC and others.

Books

• 1964 A Square of Sky: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Poland
• 1966 A Touch of Earth: A Wartime Childhood
• 1995 Light Over the Water: Post-war Wanderings 1946-48 ISBN 978-0-903431-14-9
• 1969 Part of the Main ISBN 978-0-09-096040-8
• 1992 A Square of Sky: A Wartime Childhood from Ghetto to Convent (a republication A Square of Sky and A Touch of Earth in a single volume) ISBN 978-0-907871-73-6

Film

Franz Peter Wirth filmed Leo Lehmann's adaptation of the book A Square of Sky as the 1982 mini-series Ein Stück Himmel for the ARD and the leading actress Dana Vávrová became popular in Germany in the role of Janina David.

Theatre

Janina David's autobiography A Square of Sky was the basis for a theatre show with the same title.^[4]

Honours

• 1982 - Goldener Gong for Ein Stück Himmel, together with Dana Vávrová and Franz Peter Wirth

References

External links

• Janina David in the German National Library catalogue
• Janina David at the Internet Movie Database