Relli Robinson was born in 1939 in Warsaw, Poland to Franka (nee Fersztendik) and Michał Głowinski. By living under an assumed identity with Polish rescuers, Janina and Jȯzef Abramowicz, she was the only member of her family to survive the Warsaw Ghetto.
From 1950, she lived in Israel with her father’s family, and she graduated from Kfar Hayarok Agricultural High School before serving in the IDF engineering corps and in the navy. She studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at UCLA in Los Angeles, and subsequently held senior academic administration positions at The University of Haifa in Israel, including administrative head of the welfare and health sciences faculty. Her novel Raking Light from Ashes relates the true story of her survival during the dark days of the Second World War. Published in Hebrew in 2011, the novel won a grant from the Israeli Ministry of Culture to be translated into English. She is currently a resident of Haifa, Israel, and she has a son and daughter and six grandchildren.