Alina Margolis-Edelman was born in 1922 in Lodz to an intelligentsia family of Jewish family. During World War II she was in the Warsaw ghetto. For some time she also hid on the so-called "Aryan side." She participated in the uprising in the ghetto. During the Warsaw uprising she was a nurse. After the war she became a doctor pediatrician. She took care of children suffering from diabetes. In 1968, after the anti-Semitic campaign, she was not allowed to continue her academic work, rejecting her habilitation thesis. She left with her children for France. She was involved in the Doctors Without Borders organization. She was a co-founder of the French-Polish association SOS Aide aux Malades Polonais (Aid to the Sick in Poland), which deals with the treatment abroad of incurables in Poland. After martial law was declared in Poland in December 1981, she organized aid to the democratic opposition. In 1991, she founded the Nobody's Children Foundation and co-founded the Office of Social Initiative Assistance. She died in Paris in 2008.