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    Let Me Go
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    Let Me Go
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    Let Me Go
    Ebook179 pages2 hours

    Let Me Go

    By Schneider and Helga Schneider

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMay 26, 2009
    ISBN9780802718150
    Unavailable
    Let Me Go

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    Reviews for Let Me Go

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      I don't think Helga Schneider's mother would have been a very nice person no matter when or where she was born. But, unfortunately for a lot of people, she was born in Austria in the early part of the twentieth century, which meant that she was in the prime of her life during the Nazi era. A true believer in the ideology of Aryan racial supremacy, she left her husband and two young children when the state called to what was she considered a plum job--concentration camp guard at Ravensbrück and later Auschwitz. In this capacity she beat prisoners, sent children and their mothers to the deaths, and participated in heinous pseudo-scientific experiments. Her psychopathy and complete lack of empathy found their perfect outlet in this position. After the war was over, Helga's mother was convicted of "minor war crimes," and served a brief prison sentence, but never reunited with her family. She saw her daughter Helga only once, in 1971. In her old age, Helga's mother convinced herself that both of her children were dead.In 1998, Helga was summoned by her mother's only friend to visit the now-frail old woman. Let Me Go is the harrowing story of Helga's visit to her mother's nursing home. Despite periodic dementia, her mother hasn't changed much; she alternates between wheedling her daughter into calling her "Mutti", and defending her wartime actions. She tells her daughter, "When I saw the littlest ones going into [the gas chambers] all I could think was: There's a few less Jewish brats; there are some kids who will never become repellent adult Jews" (p. 159). The visit forces Helga to remember parts of her own past she had long repressed, including her own complicity in brutality against Jews and her visit (along with a group of other schoolchildren) to Hitler's bunker, where she met the man himself.Needless to say, this book, although short, is very disturbing to read.
    • 4/5
      An interesting holocaust memoir. I listened to the audio version.
    • 4/5
      I deliberately sought out this book after some of my earlier reading on WWII. I had a lot of questions in my mind about Nazi Germany - what did regular Germans think of the Nazi activities? Why did people sign up to the SS - was it propaganda, were they naturally evil anyway?I'm not sure I got all the answers I was looking for from this memoir, but it was an interesting (although not enjoyable) short read nonetheless. The author's mother abandoned her when she was 4 to work as an officer in the SS, and they had only met once previously, a disastrous visit in 1971 which left the author feeling more abandoned and repulsed than ever. Yet 27 years later she agrees to visit her mother one final time, as she is now in her 90s.Her mother volunteered to go to work at Birkenau, which gives you an idea of the kind of character she was. Her total lack of remorse made for some difficult reading. She totally bought into the Nazi ideology, and felt that the Jews were responsible for anything and everything that was wrong with Germany, from the country's loss in WWI to ongoing defeatism. Her thoughts about the adults extended to the Jewish children who were murdered as well, which was horrifying to read.Schneider understandably goes through a spectrum of emotions when she meets her mother. On the one hand she is repulsed by her character, disgusted that she is totally unrepentant about the acts she committed, and that the ideology meant more to her than her own children. Yet despite everything she still has the invisible tie of mother/daughter with her, which made for some very confusing emotions.Reading between the lines, I felt that Schneider still carries a lot of her own guilt about the war too, even though she was just 7 when it finished. Her stepmother's sister was Goebbel's secretary, and the children were invited into Hitler's bunker and also met him. Clearly the children were in no way responsible for their parental connections, yet it's very apparent that the author wishes to play down any such events that she partook in.3.5 stars for an interesting, if difficult, insight into the horrors of Nazi Germany.
    • 4/5
      Some books are difficult to read because their subject matter is so disturbing that the reader feels traumatized by the horrific events she sees chronicled before her. And some books are difficult to read because they were obviously difficult to write, every word an agony for the author. Such books are written with their creator's blood, and the reader, who is literally consuming the suffering of another human being, feels queasy in the process. Helga Schneider's memoir, so engrossing as to be almost hypnotic in its effect, is both kinds of difficult...It took me two hours to read this riveting memoir, which I literally consumed during my train commute to and from work yesterday. It was fascinating and repellent, emotionally visceral in a way that made me feel that I was a voyeur. Written in the first-person, and frequently addressed to her mother, Let Me Go is a chronicle of Schneider's attempt to come to terms with the mother who abandoned her to become an active participant in the Nazi Final Solution. A prison guard at the Ravensbruck concentration camp, where she assisted in horrific experiments on "human guinea pigs," Schneider's mother eventually volunteered to undergo "dehumanization" treatment, in order to become a camp guard at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.The author, who met her mother only twice after being abandoned at the age of four, is haunted by her mother's atrocities, and torn by her conflicting emotions and desires. On the one hand, she longs - like all abandoned children, I would imagine - for some sort of connection to this woman she never knew, and for the "mother-kindness" that was denied to her. On the other hand, she hates everything her mother is, everything she believed in and stood for, and longs for the strength to truly sever the bond between them. Struck with pity, on her second and final visit, for her mother's old age and isolation, Schneider is also disgusted by her mother's non-repentance, her amorality, and her dishonest manipulations.I have read over thirty Holocaust memoirs over the years, but despite my interest, both in this specific topic, and in the more general questions of human evil and human suffering, I had never before read any biographies or memoirs devoted to any of the perpetrators. I think, upon reflection, that I have been afraid to delve too deeply into that "banality of evil" of which Arendt writes, afraid that some fleeting glimpse of humanity might evoke an unwanted sense of fellow-feeling. Because no matter how honestly we may acknowledge that seed of evil which lies in all of us, no one wants to look into the face of depravity, and see any part of themselves...How much more terrible and inescapable this question of human evil, and our connection to it must be, when the face of depravity is one's own mother! I commend Schneider for her bravery in writing this book, for exposing her personal anguish and shame to the world, in her effort to further the discussion of these important questions. How unbearable sad it is to me, that her sacrifice does not bring her, or her readers, any closer to understanding such incomprehensible hate...
    • 4/5
      A memoir about a woman who attempts to come to terms with the fact that her mother belonged to the SS and, as a concentration camp guard, participated in the "medical research" torture of Jews. When the author, Helga Schneider, was four year -old, she was abandoned by her mother, Traudi. As an adult, Helga, with her young son, met her mother once and, discovering some of what Traudi had done, had no interest in maintaining any relationship with her. Now, 30 years later, her mother is ill and her memory is fading, and Helga and her cousin visit Traudi for one last time. Helga would like her mother to admit that she was wrong, as a mother and as a person; and she is driven to find out the details of her mother's crimes. Traudi, whose memory and ability to focus are sketchy, remains stubborn and certain that her actions were justified. Both mother and daughter probably want to feel loved by the other, but too much has happened and not happened.The book also contains memories that Helga has fo her wartime experiences. She met Hitler. Her relatives worked for highranking Nazi officials. Regretfully, she joined with a mob attacking a Jewish couple. And she suffered from hunger and cold. I will admit that my sympathy for her, an innocent child in a world not of her making, is not as deep as it is for her mother's victims.There was an interesting quote: She looks at me with an expression of apparently genuine regret. "If you hoped I was going to change my mind, I'm sorry to have to disappoint you. I'm staying the way I was." And she concluded: "I've told the truth, the whole truth. The truth you wanted." The truth I wanted... ... Has she been truly sincere, or has she said what she thought I wanted to hear---something that would help me to hate her definitely, to free myself from her once and for all?Part of me---the part that wants everyone to be nice---wants to believe that Traudi says what she thinks will help her daughter. But the rest of me believes that Helga would really prefer to have a mother that feels remorse than to feel unambiguous hatred and what must Traudi be like if she thinks her answer is satisfying?
    • 4/5
      Short book, but powerful.
    • 4/5
      On a simple level, this is the story of a woman's visit with her elderly mother in a nursing home. On a deep level it is that woman's effort to come to terms with a mother who abandoned her children in order to become a guard in a Nazi extermination camp. Compelling. Disturbing.
    • 4/5
      It's hard to tell who this is about. As it was an autobiography I expected to read more about Helga's life; instead the focus is on her mother Traudi, making it more of a biography of her life. Very interesting to read and at times it makes for uncomfortable reading. Nevertheless this is a worthwhile experience. I had expected it to be even more detailed that it is actually is, so it was somewhat of an easier experience than anticipated. Overall it is well written but occasionally it drifts and it can be confusing as to whether you are reading the present or the recent past. The setting for the book is a visit to where Traudi is staying. She is 90 years old and it's just before she dies. Traudi left Helga and her brother Peter when she was 4; choosing her job for the SS over her children. Helga then met up with her again only once more before this visit. The relationship between mother and daughter is fascinating. I don't know if I hated her as much as Helga kept saying she did whether I would have stayed and suffered the abuse she was still dealing out at 90. It is both fascinating yet frank. Helga takes her cousin Eva with her on the visit and facts are revealed that Eva finds distressing; adding to Helga's discomfort and concerns. Being quite short at 149 pages it means you can read it in one sitting which might be better as there no actual chapters. Instead there are suitable places to stop reading should you need to. Worth a read but I don't know if I'll read the prequel 'The Bonfire of Berlin'.
    • 5/5
      This is a facinating, sad, and painful rendering of a German family torn apart by political alliances during Hitlers reign. The author paints a vivid picture of the forgotten victims of this era. Helga was abused and then abandoned by her mother who had ties to the Nazi party and was dedicated to the Nazi agenda. Helga grew up with the legacy of a mother who was a guard at Auschwitz and participated in subjecting prisoners to unimaginable experiments, and killed untold numbers of people. This book tells the story of her final visit to her mother after a lifetime of separation and decribes the raw emotion, disappointment, and saddness involved. There is no happy ending here, only reality told from a point of view that we don't often get to experience.
    • 3/5
      A disturbing book of memoirs by the daughter of a female guard at Auschwitz - I kept hoping for just a glimmer of a happy ending but there was none.