Let Me Go

Description

When Helga Schneider was four, her mother, Traudi, abandoned her to pursue her career. In 1998, Helga receives a letter asking her to visit Traudi, now 90-years old, before she dies. Mother and daughter have met only once before since Traudi left, on a disastrous visit where Helga first learnt the terrible secret of her mother's past. Traudi was as an extermination guard in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck and was also involved in Nazi 'medical 'experiments on prisoners. She has never expressed even the slightest remorse for her actions, yet Helga still hopes that at this final meeting she will find some way to forgive her mother. 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.

Helga Schneider (Author) Helga Schneider, born in 1937 in Steinberg, now in Poland, spent her childhood in Berlin. When her mother left the family in 1941 to become a concentration camp guard, Helga Schneider was brought up first by her stepmother, and then in boarding-schools. She is the author of Let Me Go. Shaun Whiteside (Translator) Shaun Whiteside is an award-winning translator from French, German, Italian and Dutch. His most recent translations from German include Aftermath by Harald J hner, To Die in Spring by Ralf Rothmann, Swansong 1945 by Walter Kempowski, Berlin Finale by Heinz Rein and The Broken House by Horst Kr ger.

A powerful, painful book about moral responsibility * Guardian * Remarkable... Helga Schneider's frank account is desperately sad and powerful. Unforgettable * Jewish Telegraph * Frightening and fascinating * Mail on Sunday * Let Me Go grips the reader completely * Glasgow Herald * The book evocatively portrays the deprivations of wartime Berlin and the devastating emotional impact of one evil individual * Irish Times *