Macha Rolnikas was born in Vilna in the Soviet Union in 1927. The family were Jewish and Macha's father was a lawyer and a well-known opponent of fascism. When the German Army captured Vilna in 1941 he left to join the partisan underground.

Soon after the Germans arrived all Jews were rounded up and forced to live in the Vilna Ghetto. Macha was moved to Stutthof where she was employed by the Germans as an undertaker in the crematory furnace. This involved removing the gold from the teeth of those who had died in the ghetto. As this was an important job Macha was not murdered and was one of the few Jews left alive when the Red Army liberated Stutthof in 1944.

After the war Macha graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. She then got married and moved to Leningrad.

During the Second World War Macha kept a diary. This was turned into a book, I Must Tell, and was published in the Soviet Union in 1964.