Customer Reviews

Let Me Go

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

"Let Me Go" is one of the strangest, most thought-provoking books
about the murder of the European Jews, which, considering how many
such books there are, is saying something.

It recounts a two-hour conversation, with backgrounding excursions,
held in 1997 between Helga Schneider, then 60 years old, and her
mother, then about 90. It is, so far as I know, the only memoir by a
daughter about a mother that never names the mother.

But that is not nearly the strangest thing. When Helga was four, her
mother deserted her, her father and her infant brother to volunteer
as a guard at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Helga saw her mother two more
times, at intervals of about 30 years, the last encounter being
related here (from memory, as she does not indicate she took notes,
nor, in the emotionally explosive atmosphere, could she have done).

The heart-questioning of an abandoned child is powerful stuff but
neither new nor strange. But what are we to make of a fanatic Jew-
murderer who, after 60 years - the interview took place in 1998 -
does not show the slightest sign of doubt?

By this I do not mean moral doubt, but even the practical surmise
that, whatever one thought about the alleged "Jewish problem,"
starting a world war was not the cleverest way to go about "solving" it.

Schneider, clearly grasping at straws, imagines that her mother is
putting up an act, pretending to certainty as a way of completing a
divorce: a way of saying, I am not worthy, forget me.

However, this does not fit the rest of the facts as we are given
them, particularly Frau Schneider's begging not to be left
alone.

Helga Schneider comes away from the interview unable to understand,
and the reader is in no better case.

Was the mother a mere sociopath, unable to comprehend the feelings of
others? Evidently not, because she professes admiration for her
comrades in the SS.

Was she insane? Maybe, depending on how you define that, but also
apparently not. Not psychotic, at any rate. She knew what she was
doing, and bragged about consciously taking the Harteausbildung, the
formal dehumanizing course that the SS used to wring the last qualms
out of suitable candidates for murder and sadism.

Frau Schneider's treatment of her daughter suggests a sadistic
streak, apart from Jew-hatred, and also raises anew questions about a
certain style of German child-rearing, although Helga Schneider does
not pursue that.

In her wavering, uncertain attempts to determine who and what her
mother was, she settles, more or less, on a lust for power. That fits
the will-to-power ideology so loudly proclaimed by the Nazis, but
willing the state to power is very different from willing a self to
power.

Although Frau Schneider willed herself to what she regarded as
important work, and to a position of respect, it was a highly
qualified power, since the SS loyalty oath and requirement for strict
obedience required each individual to surrender all of her personal
autonomy.

No, will to power does not answer the question: Who would volunteer
to work in a death factory?

However, "Let Me Go" provides an unusually intimate way of asking the
question.

I heard this book on audio, read by the great Barbara Rosenblatt. I found this book because I was looking for books she narrates.

This is one of the most profound books I've ever encountered. The balance of hatred and love. The longing for love. The unremitting digging by Helga at a mother who is both helpless and sadistic. As Helga is, too. I said "irritating," because I got really annoyed at the "why didn't you love me, mother?" repeated over and over in different ways. I wanted to say, "Oh, get a life." There was a certain amount of melodrama I got tired of. But the honesty was stunning and the ambiguity totally captivating. The descriptions of the people and places are marvelous.

I want to take issue with readers who complain about not knowing which camps the mother worked at. Helga provides endless details and digs for more. Her obsessive research is one of the best things about this book. There is no factual info missing.

This is a picture, closeup, of a woman whose life lacked meaning (the mother) until she found a belief and a home in the SS and somebody to hate -- the Jews. It gives new meaning to the idea of a woman's leaving home to "find herself." She found herself quite contentedly in hell. And her daughter deals with it all both intellectually and emotionally with amazing insight.

Wow. This book is going to haunt me for a long time.

i just finished the audio version of 'Let Me Go.' Over the course of a lifetime, thanks to countless tv documentaries, books, movies, museums exhibitions, etc., we're aware and informed of so much that occurred in the death camps during the Holocaust. We have heard many barbaric specifics before or at least enough to extrapolate much of the rest; much of it is not a surprise or revelation, per se, but more than half a century later in this story, the truths of the Holocaust still shock. Can you call an audio book a 'page turner?'

What sets this book apart in this audio version, is it's no-holds-barred, accounting straight from the mouth of a former female Nazi SS guard, the mother of the author, Helga Schneider. The author's rollercoaster of emotions and pain is pitiful and incredibly moving enough and in Rosesnblat's hands, the mother's undiminished hatred is so palpable; she is vile, repulsive, and totally unrepentant. This book speaks to the pathological motivations and complicity of that time. This is the voice of one woman and it is the voice of many. The question has been asked incessantly, by so many as to render it trite; 'How could this have happened?' In this book, in these words, and especially in this superb reading, you sit there and say to yourself, "This is how such a thing can happen."

Let Me Go is one of the most un-put-down-able books I've ever read. Though in general my husband and I have very different reading interests he also found it to be so. We each had it finished within 24 hrs. In it Helga Schneider exposes the raw emotional journey of seeing her aged and estranged mother for the last time. This is an intensely personal book focussed entirely on this exchange and to a limited extent the intruding context of Helga's childhood and Helga's previous visit decades ago. The book leaves questions unanswered, and that is it's strength. Just as some readers may find that there are no satisfactory answers in some respects, there are none for Helga. The book does not interpret it just tells you the story with an honesty that is incredibly courageous. There may be things that the reader wishes had been resolved or discussed in the exchange, but this is not the reader's story, it is Helga's story. I have read a lot of Military history and I found this book a wonderful, powerful and moving counterpoint as it illustrates the lasting legacy for the innocents even so many decades on.
I consider this book to be one of the most precious in my library.
This review is based on the hardcover edition.

History is often written on the grand stage. The huge battles or landmark laws are recorded. The feelings of the children whose parents are caught up in the "monumental events" are rarely recorded. In "Let Me Go, Helga Schneider has given us just such an account. Her mother was a seemingly unapologetic nazi who abandoned her family to serve Hitler. Helga is now going to visit her dying mother, who is possibly suffering from dementia. Helga just needs to know, and engages in incredibly difficult conversations with her mother. Is her mother still rational? Is she telling the truth? Why would she do the brutal things that she herself describes (including tortures and nonchalantly sending another woman who offended her to be enslaved in a brothel). This is compelling reading, and an underappreciated way of knowing history. The only comment I have, and it is not directed at Schneider, but at society in general. We are always surprised when it is a woman who in engages in such terrifying acts, as it violates the stereotype of female behavior. We would probably not be as surprised if this book were written in terms of going to see her aged father.

I listened to this in audiobook format which I highly recommend. The narrator sounds like Bette Davis when she's acting out the part of Helga's mother which is totally disturbing (but appropriate).

I agree with the reviewer who said that this book leaves one questioning many aspects of what happened to the author as a young girl. One only hears small bits about her life in Wartime Germany and about her relationship with her father and brother. The main emphasis is on trying to understand her mother, and to a lesser extent her step-mother. She centers the book around her second visit with her mother as a very old woman who is about to die. Mom is senile but still clever as a fox and completely unable to show remorse for any actions in her life. She's been telling people for years that her children are dead. This is a woman who not only abandoned her husband and young children, but was an SS Officer who led Concentration Camp victims into Gas Chambers and participated in Scientific experiments where she tied prisoners down so that their muscles and limbs could be sawed off and then watched as they were slowly and painfully allowed to die. So, the picture is very complicated. There are so many layers to this writer's relationship to her "Muti" (sp?). Helga Schneider remembers having close to nothing to eat during the war while listening to her mother brag about dining on Champagne and Caviar. In their previous meeting her mother had asked her to put on her old SS uniform. Some of this behavior can maybe be partially explained by the Desensitization Training that the SS Officers received. It's just plain interesting to hear the conversations between Helga and her mother's caregivers, friends and other relatives as they try to accept her as a person.

Helga describes meeting Hitler as a child. She describes an aunt who worked for Goebbels and describes the crush that her aunt had on him. As the saying goes, may you never be born in interesting times...

I've read a couple of novels by German writers about the war and Anne Frank's diary but never a memoir from "the Aryan side". This would have been a truly difficult book to write on about 30 different levels. I'm glad Ms. Schneider did.

Helga Schneider talks courageously and agonisingly about a subject near and dear to most people: her mother. Her short tale is both gut-wrenching and powerful. Schneider's story is not only about her mother but also her own painful journey. Her's is a tale of humanity in the face of unassailable evil.