Joanna Sobolewska Pyz was born on 31 July 1939 in Warsaw. Together with her parents Tadeusz and Halina Grynszpan (née Zylbelbart) she stayed in the Warsaw Ghetto. Her parents probably died in Treblinka. She was brought on 18 April 1943 by a Navy Blue policeman to the teacher Wanda Niczowa, who passed her on to her foster parents: Anastazja and Stanisław Sobolewski. During the war they first lived at 8 Wilcza Street in Warsaw, then in Milanówek, and then in Murzynki near Mszczonów.
Anastasia Sobolewska had a heart condition and died in 1958. After her mother's death, Joanna Sobolewska found out that she was a child taken out of the ghetto.
She studied sociology, worked in the National Library, then in the Institute of Youth Research, and finally in the Institute of Sociology at the University of Warsaw. She is involved in the activities of the Association of Children of the Holocaust.
