Janina David was born as the only child to a Jewish Polish family, and moved with them to Warsaw in 1939. After she escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, taking refuge with a German-Polish family and then in a convent, and her parents had died as victims of the holocaust, she left Poland in 1946 and moved to Paris with an uncle. 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. 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. 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.

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

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