Synopses & Reviews
Unforgettable and deeply arresting, Let Me Go is a haunting memoir of World War II that “won’t let you go until you’ve finished reading the last page” (The Washington Post Book World). In 1941, in Berlin, Helga Schneider’s mother abandoned her along with her father and younger brother. Let Me Go recounts Helga’s final meeting with her ailing mother in a Vienna nursing home some sixty years after World War II, in which Helga confronts a nightmare: her mother’s lack of repentance about her past as a Nazi SS guard at concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where she was responsible for untold acts of torture. With spellbinding detail, Schneider recalls their conversation, evoking her own struggle between a daughter’s sense of obligation and the inescapable horror of her mother’s deeds.
Review
"For the duration of these pages, the old, mad Germany that we had thought dead comes to life again." —
J. M. Coetzee
"A deeply personal, heartbreaking story." —The Women’s Review of Books
Synopsis
Unforgettable and deeply arresting, Let Me Go is a haunting memoir of World War II that wont let you go until youve finished reading the last page (The Washington Post Book World). In 1941, in Berlin, Helga Schneiders mother abandoned her along with her father and younger brother. Let Me Go recounts Helgas final meeting with her ailing mother in a Vienna nursing home some sixty years after World War II, in which Helga confronts a nightmare: her mothers lack of repentance about her past as a Nazi SS guard at concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where she was responsible for untold acts of torture. With spellbinding detail, Schneider recalls their conversation, evoking her own struggle between a daughters sense of obligation and the inescapable horror of her mothers deeds.
About the Author
Helga Schneider was born in 1937 in Steinberg, now Poland, and spent her childhood in Berlin. She has been a freelance writer for many years in Bologna, Italy.