“Take a seat, please,” the older man said to Batya. He was dressed in black and had silver hair that, although oiled, fanned out like a dandelion.

Sergio nodded his assent. “Meet the Honorable Joaquin Ramos, the prosecutor,” he said to Batya in Yiddish. “He wants to ask you a few questions.”

They spoke little on the way back. Batya was emotionally drained from reliving the horrors of her initial captivity, from articulating its experiences in words. Señor Joaquin Ramos’s probing questions—asked kindly but unrelentingly—brought back the fear and agony of those early days five years before. The rapes, starvation, caging, and beatings rushed back with all their force. At one point, she bolted from her seat and, gagging, ran to the spittoon in the corner of the room.

While she was vomiting, a cool palm pressed her forehead, and she glimpsed the bottom of Sergio’s pressed white trousers. When she straightened, coughing, he let go of her and went out to the stairwell, where he called down an order for a meat sandwich, tea, and cake.

Once she had revived, though, the questions continued.

Now, walking in the streets, her legs felt as weak as if she had danced those two hours of interrogation. Hopefully, she could salvage a half hour’s siesta before the late afternoon work, which wouldn’t end until just before dawn.

Her cheeks ached from speaking Spanish; she had never used that language for more than flirting with a client, bargaining with a vendor, or instructing the house helpers who handled the heavy laundry and lavatory cleaning. When she stumbled or was at a loss for words, Sergio came to her rescue. She told him the Yiddish words and he translated them for her, but for the young man taking notes, it was required that she utter the Spanish herself.

Señor Ramos must have been dissatisfied with her story, because he kept grilling her for more details. Just the recollection of how he had made her repeat or expand on every moment of her suffering had made her feel exploited all over again. Sergio’s presence nearby, hearing everything—well-meaning though he was—magnified her disgrace.

At the end of the session, the young man asked Batya to sign every page of his large notepad. How proud she was when, presented with an ink pad for her fingerprint, she instead courageously took his pen and signed her name. She knew how to do it only in Yiddish, not in Spanish—and had never held a pen. The ink smeared while her hand moved over the letters from right to left, but it was her name. She’d written it herself in ink!

“A signature is a signature, and we are witnesses,” Joaquin Ramos had said.

Now she and Sergio rounded the corner onto a tree-lined street, and he finally spoke. “Thank you for telling it all. I knew you women suffered, yet I didn’t imagine how much.”