Review: Let Me Go by Helga Schneider

Book Info:

Let Me Go by Helga Schneider

Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Penguin (August 30, 2005)
ISBN-10: 0143035177

Genre: Nonfiction

Source: Library, Audio

Rating: 4.5/5

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.

I was recently browsing the library's audio downloads when this one caught my eye. I needed another book for my WWII challenge and I liked that Let Me Go looked like a quick listen at only 5 disks. Since the weather has turned cold and I'm not walking to work my audio listening has suffered and I find shorter books work a little better. What I didn't expect was the emotional impact those 5 disks carried...

Let Me Go is a snapshot of a story. There is a little background included in the form of flashbacks and stories, but the bulk of the story is one conversation. This may seem a little incomplete to some, but I thought the format worked well. Schneider didn't have much knowledge of her mother beyond this conversation and I liked that the reader/listener didn't know more than she did.

The narrator of this book, Barbara Rosenblat, is amazing. She inflects so much emotion into the book that I often found myself with goosebumps. When she reads the mother's words it varies between and old woman's confusion and petulance to unashamed cruelty. While Let Me Go is a fascinating story of an insider's experience in the concentration camps, it is worth listening to for the wonderful narration alone. 4.5 stars