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Sign up todayLet Me Go
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Learn moreHelga Schneider was four when her mother suddenly abandoned her family in Berlin in 1941. When she next saw her mother, thirty years later, she learned the shocking reason why.
Helga’s mother had joined the Nazi SS and had become a guard in the concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where she was in charge of a “correction” unit and responsible for untold acts of torture.
Nearly thirty more years would pass before their second and final reunion, an emotional encounter in Vienna where her ailing mother, then eighty-seven and unrepentant about her past, was living in a nursing home. Let Me Go is the extraordinary account of that meeting and of their conversation, which powerfully evokes the misery of obligation colliding with the inescapable horror of what her mother has done.
Helga Schneider was born in 1937 in Steinberg, now in Poland, and spent her childhood in Berlin. She has lived as a freelance writer for many years in Bologna, Italy.
Barbara Rosenblat is a multi-award-winning voice actor for audiobooks. On Broadway, she created the role of 'Mrs. Medlock' in 'The Secret Garden'.
Reviews
“Schneider packs…[an] emotional punch into this brief but tremendously cathartic memoir.”
“For the duration of these pages, the old, mad Germay that we had thought dead comes to life again.”
“An exceptional document, an autobiographical testimony of the first order, this essential book confronts the reader with an absolute truth.”
“A courageous and terrifying document.”
“Schneider writes with words that burn on the page…with a love and pity that could leave no one indifferent.”
“Rosenblat is completely believable. She is by turns sly, boastful, strident, angry, confused, and pitiable…This unforgettable memoir is a gripping and moving listening experience.”
“Barbara Rosenblat’s reading is astounding…[as] she demonstrates her brilliance at bringing the written word to audio. When Rosenblat reads Schneider’s mother’s words, the listener is chilled by the evil in her voice, and when she reads Schneider’s words, the listener feels the anger and confusion that permeate the book. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award.”
“Mothers come in all shapes and persuasions…Survivor’s tales come in as many shapes as mothers. This one, from the dark side, is as affecting as a kick in the stomach.”
“Only a versatile, sensitive reader like Rosenblat could narrate such emotionally fraught terrain.”
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