The woman did not look back, but flung herself without hesitation off the edge of the bridge with her children. There was a collective gasp from the crowd and a sickening thud as the woman and her children hit the water several meters below.

For a minute, I wondered if the Germans or police would go in after them. Seemingly satisfied that the woman and her children could not have survived the leap, the officials turned away and the crowd began to disperse. However, the barricades remained, with several police remaining to form a makeshift checkpoint, leaving the bridge unpassable. I knew I would not be seeing Sadie today. Even if I could get across the bridge, it would not be safe to go to the grate now. I started sadly back toward home.

Thick raindrops began to fall as I recrossed the city center, pelting the cobblestones, which gave off an ancient, earthy smell. The pedestrians and shoppers scurried home now beneath umbrellas, a sea of bobbing black mushrooms. My hair and dress grew soaking, but I was so shaken by what I had seen that I scarcely noticed. I pictured the woman and her children as they jumped from the bridge. Had they died upon impact or drowned? Some part of me imagined them swimming to safety and coming out of the river to freedom farther down the banks. But the truth was that, in the broad daylight of a spring morning, a woman had just killed herself and her children in front of my very eyes, rather than be taken and separated from them by the Nazis. And I, along with dozens of other people, had stood by and watched.

I had been out longer than I expected on my failed trip to see Sadie and it was nearly noon when I returned to our house. Ana Lucia was entertaining again, this time a smaller gathering for Sunday lunch. I had skipped breakfast that morning in my hurry to get to Sadie, and as I imagined the buffet spread of meats and cheeses, my mouth watered. But I would sooner eat dirt than join them.

I tried to slip through the foyer and up to my room unseen to change out of my wet clothes. But as I neared the stairs, a German officer stepped from the toilet into the hall and blocked my way. “Dzień dobry, fräulein,” he said, his greeting a clumsy mix of Polish and German. I recognized him as Oberführer Maust. He was a high-ranking SS colonel who had recently transferred to Kraków, I’d heard Ana Lucia tell one of her friends a few weeks earlier. Drawn to his power and influence, she had quickly ingratiated herself to him, and he had become a regular fixture by her side.

And not just at her lunches and dinner parties—the previous night when I had gotten home, Ana Lucia’s dinner party had ended but one guest had remained behind. I had heard him follow her up the stairs to her bedroom. He said something low and cajoling, and my stepmother had giggled, a sound too young and unseemly for someone her age. I was repulsed. It was one thing to entertain the Germans, quite another to have one sleep in the bed she had shared with my father. I never hated her more. That morning as I had passed Ana Lucia’s bedroom I could hear from the corridor two sets of snoring, hers thick and bubbling, another unbroken and deep.