“Nine months. Jakub’s birthday is in March, so he’s about to turn four, and Adam is fourteen months.” A sudden realization seemed to hit her, one I imagined she’d dwelled on so often before, but with fresh pain each time. “My son is growing from a toddler to a little boy, and I missed my baby’s first words, his first birthday . . .” After a moment, she took a calming breath. “I’ll never forget the night they were taken. It was late Saturday evening, the twelfth of April. We had one final Sabbath as a family. The rest of us were arrested a week later.”

The date stood out in my mind. Something important had happened on the twelfth of April. It was a date I’d promised myself I’d remember because it was the day I completed a resistance errand by myself for the first time. I had delivered papers. Mama was supposed to have joined me, but I’d gone alone because she’d gone to the ghetto.

I sat up a bit straighter, reminding myself to breathe. It was a coincidence, that’s all.

“What about the person who took your children?”

“They went with a woman I’d met a few times, and I had friends who let her take their children. She persuaded me into letting my boys go. She was kind and friendly, but I don’t know much personal information aside from her name. I doubt it was her real name, but she went by Stanisława.”

A resistance woman named Stanisława who rescued children on the twelfth of April. The same alias Mama used, the same night she went into the ghetto.

“What did Stanisława look like?” I kept my voice light. If my suspicions were wrong, I didn’t want to get Hania’s hopes up. After all, I was sure plenty of resistance women went by that alias and had gone into the ghetto that evening.

“She was a Gentile and older than me by ten years or so. Average height, blond hair, beautiful. She wore a wedding band, so I assume she was married.” Hania was quiet for a moment. “Once, she said she had a son a bit older than Jakub, my three-year-old.”

At the time, Karol would have been four years old. “Did Stanisława say anything else about her personal life?”