“It took you long enough to recognize me,” she said, seeming unfazed by my incredulity.

“How?” I whispered. “I heard the gunshots.”

“They must have been someone else’s. After I said goodbye to you, I went to the courtyard, where a guard said he’d been ordered to take me elsewhere for execution. He took me to a storeroom instead, gave me civilian clothing, put me in a car, and drove me out of the camp. The Polish resistance had gotten word to its camp contacts that I was coming, so they bribed him into saving me.”

As Irena mentioned the camp’s resistance, my heart swelled with sudden gratitude. Pilecki. His organization had saved her life.

Irena adjusted her black leather gloves and lifted her gaze to mine. “After we discovered your family had been caught, Mama and I spent weeks trying to determine how to bribe a Pawiak guard to break you out. By the time we found one willing to help, he said you’d been sent away. We thought they’d taken you somewhere and killed you, otherwise we would have kept looking.” She paused and took a breath. “When the guard fetched me from the execution wall and said he was letting me go, I begged him to go back for you, but he said that wasn’t part of the plan and if I didn’t leave right away then he’d shoot me, and I . . .” She let her voice die, but she wrapped one arm across her midsection. I could picture it as round as it had been upon our last meeting.

“Your baby?” I murmured.

Those words brought a fond smile to Irena’s lips. “Helena is a happy, healthy two-year-old. After she was born, I contacted our German resistance connections, and they taught me how to masquerade as a guard. I learned all the Nazi shit I needed to know, got the right papers, perfected my German accent, dyed my hair, and put on this damn uniform. Since you’d reported my death to Mama and stayed in touch with her, I knew you were still alive, but we decided it would be safer if you didn’t know I survived. When I went to a Nazi women’s organization to volunteer for camp employment, our contacts and a few well-placed bribes ensured I was sent to this one. Now here I am: Frieda Lichtenberg, daughter of dairy workers in Wrechen, a few years of primary education, staunch member of the Bund Deutscher Mädel, Aufseherin of Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

Months of studying and preparation to infiltrate the SS-Helferin as a woman created by the Third Reich, and she had somehow succeeded. My brain felt as if it were trudging through mud. “If you survived and escaped, why are you back?”

“Why the hell do you think? Because I’m getting you out of here, you idiot.”