Let Me Go - Hardcover

Schneider, Helga

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802714358 ISBN 13: 9780802714350

Publisher: Walker & Co, 2004

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

'A powerful, painful book about moral responsibility' -- The Guardian

'Disturbing, haunting memoir' -- Belfast Telegraph

'Frightening and Fascinating' -- Mail on Sunday

'Remarkable...Helga Schneider's frank account is desperately sad and powerful. Unforgettable' -- Jewish Telegraph

'The book evocatively portrays the deprivations of wartime Berlin and the devastating emotional impact of one evil individual' -- Irish Times

From the Publisher:

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A BBC PAGETURNER

This extraordinary, frank account of Helga's last meeting with her mother is desperately sad and extraordinarily powerful. She describes without sentimentality her own difficult upbringing and vividly evokes the misery of Nazi Berlin. Her book provides a terrifying insight into the psyche of an otherwise unremarkable woman whose life was given a seemingly unshakable sense of purpose and fulfilment by the most evil and repellent aspects of the Third Reich.

About this edition

• Publisher: Walker & Co
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0802714358
• ISBN 13: 9780802714350
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 166