Let Me Go [Hardcover]

Helga Schneider (Author), Shaun Whiteside (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0802714358 | ISBN-13: 978-0802714350 | Publication Date: May 1, 2004 | Edition: First American Edition

The extraordinary memoir, praised across Europe, of a daughter's final encounter with her mother, a former SS guard at Auschwitz.

In 1941, in Berlin, Helga Schneider's mother abandoned her, her younger brother, and her father. Thirty years later-- when she saw her mother again for the first time-- Schneider discovered the shocking reason: Her mother had joined the Nazi SS and had become a guard in concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbrück, where she was in charge of a "correction" unit and responsible for untold acts of torture.

Nearly three more decades would pass before their second and final reunion, an emotional encounter at a Vienna nursing home, where her mother, then eighty-seven and unrepentant about her past, was ailing. Let Me Go is an extraordinary account of that meeting. Their conversation-- which Schneider recounts in spellbinding detail-- triggers childhood memories, and she weaves these into her account, powerfully evoking the misery of Nazi and postwar Berlin. Yet it is her internal struggle-- a daughter's sense of obligation colliding with the inescapable horror of what her mother has done-- that will stay with readers long after the book has ended.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Schneider, who was born in Poland in 1937 and grew up in Berlin, shares the last encounter with her mother in Austria, after decades of separation, as readers become privy to her complex autobiography. In 1941, when Schneider was four, her mother abandoned her, her brother and her father to join the SS army in various concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and visited the family only once after leaving. Thirty years later, working as a writer in Italy, Schneider learns of the old woman's quickly deteriorating health and decidesâ€"albeit hesitantlyâ€"to pay her a visit. Schneider attempts to reconcile her ambivalent emotions toward a mother who unfalteringly announces, "Well, my daughter, like it or not, I have never regretted being a member of the Waffen SS, is that clear?" Schneider's first-person narration fluidly alternates between her inner thoughts and the conversation she has with her mother, and she's open about her overwhelming desire to come to terms with the convoluted circumstances of her youth. Schneider's voice is honest, and it's easy to understand the rapidly changing emotions that flow throughout: her panic attacks prior to the re-encounter, her desire to both forgive and physically harm her mother, her simple need to understand the truth. In the end, it's unclear whether the visit concretized Schneider's feelings toward her mother. She understands this situation doesn't have any one correct emotion and demonstrates this with explicit details of the conversation and what she felt at the time. The simple certainty of Schneider's pain, strength and intricate emotions resounds well after this story ends.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–When Schneider was four, her mother abandoned her children for a career in the SS. In the ensuing 57 years, Schneider saw her only once. Prompted by a letter from her mother's friend and emboldened by the presence of a cousin, she went again to visit the woman in a senior citizen's home in Vienna in 1998. In this searing memoir, she describes the visit and her struggles with a kind of instinctive mother-love, her feelings of abandonment, and a distaste at the thought of any connection to this morally repugnant person. Interspersed with the narrative of the visit are quotations from official records, Schneider's own recollections of a childhood in wartime Berlin, and scraps of horrific detail she remembers having heard about the experiences of concentration camp inmates such as those her mother guarded. "It was my job to assist the doctors," her mother says. Readers cannot help but be fascinated as well as horrified by this woman's unrepentance and the impenetrable shield she has built around her emotions. "I was only obeying orders." "I believed in Germany's mission." But when visiting hours are over, she cannot allow the daughter she abandoned to leave, grabbing her around the neck and kissing her wildly. This is a book for readers with some previous knowledge of the Holocaust, presenting a very different point of view. It is an excellent choice for discussion of the complex situations of people dealing with horrific events in their country's or their family's history whether they were peripherally involved, or not at all. A compelling and unforgettable story.–Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company; First American Edition edition (May 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802714358
• ISBN-13: 978-0802714350
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #436,468 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brave and Honest Memoir, January 18, 2006

By 

Suzanne M. Wolski "Suzanne Wolski 'avid reader" (Vermont) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Let Me Go (Hardcover)

I was spellbound by this book! Helga Schneiders honesty and courage for writing about her painful past is quite admirable.
Her mother was a frightening figure full of hate and had a complete lack of compassion. She abandons her children to become a concentration camp guard and even fifty years later still has no regrets. It must be horribly painful to have such a amoral parent, but in the context of a horrible war one can imagine how difficult it must have been.

I do not see this as Holocust literature as some have said, but more about a daughter trying to understand how she could have been given birth by such an evil person. I think it is an important piece of work. Thank you Helga Schneider it really made an impact on me.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the bravest books I've read..., March 12, 2005

By 

hawthorne wood "hawthorne wood" (santa fe, new mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Let Me Go (Hardcover)

I have read a few books in my life that I consider incredibly brave. This is one of them. To expose to the world what her mother did; to face her own horror and shame because she cannot help loving - and loathing - her own flesh and blood - this book is a great sacrifice for mankind. The writer has opened her veins to let us see evil as it exists in her own mother! It is the ultimate truth-telling about what happened in Nazi concentration camps: the suffering, the vile participation in genocide by the German people; men - and, yes, women. "Thank you!" to this author for the gift, difficult as it was to read - to witness what she had to go through to get the truth - and that searing truth itself.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Recommended, July 21, 2006

By 

John Boland "John Boland" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Let Me Go (Hardcover)

I "read" this book as a book on tape. The book on tape was VERY good due to the "acting ability" of the reader whose name escapes me. If you read the book yourself from a hard copy you can imagine a lady's voice with, of course, a German accent. I wouldn't say this is a "must read" book, but very interesting and enjoyable none-the-less---- Not boring, in other words. Email:boland7214@aol.