This gripping book reads like a novel. Schneider threads together the meeting itself, with the background, her memories of the past, and the facts she has discovered about Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. A year after her mother left, Helga’s father remarried and her new stepmother much preferred Helga’s younger brother. Helga would later end up, unwanted, in a children’s home. Her emotions, as she confronts her elderly mother, are complicated by the personal trauma she experienced at her abandonment, and the added trauma of having a Nazi war criminal for a parent.

Traudi is a cantankerous old woman of around 90 who doesn’t even recognise her daughter at first. In fact, following their previous meeting in 1971, Traudi destroyed all those possessions that linked her to her children in an attempt to remove them from her memory. She has convinced herself that her daughter and son are dead, and it takes some time for it to dawn on her that it is really Helga standing before her. Only a teddy bear convinces her of the truth.

As Helga knows only too well, her mother was a particularly fanatical Nazi, utterly dedicated to the SS and the elimination of the Jews. Painful as it is, Helga wants to know what her mother did. Traudi worked at Ravensbruck where medical experiments were carried out on prisoners. She tied such prisoners to tables, where they could wait for hours, before painful experiments were conducted on them. Some doctors who worked at Ravensbruck and elsewhere are named. One especially horrific example of Nazi medical experiments involved sterilization using radiation. One man, known to Helga, had to be castrated after his genitals were damaged in this way. The Nazis planned to use such techniques on people without their knowledge, by having them stand behind a desk, for a few minutes, for what would appear routine reasons. But while they were standing, they would be subjected to radiation around the groin.

Schneider has included a few of these more horrendous facts. As she tries to confront her mother, attempting to find out if the woman has any remorse at all, she thinks on the things she has read about, her own memories, including a childhood incident of anti-Semitism which she herself was encouraged to engage in. Now she feels huge shame. Traudi, on the other hand, is proud of her record as a guard. Helga continually tries to find a chink in Traudi’s armour - didn’t she feel pity even for the children, the babies, the nursing mothers? In fact, the only time Traudi ever seemed to feel sorry was when she deliberately sent a woman she knew from her previous life to the camp brothel. The woman died of a venereal disease, and Traudi had a brief twinge of guilt. Otherwise, she approved of the Holocaust, and still does, believing the Nazis had been right to target the Jews.

One of the things that becomes clear is how manipulative Traudi can be. She bargains with Helga, feeding her bits of the past, for a few more minutes of time with her daughter. There are times when the old woman seems rather sad, and even Helga, horrified though she is by this person, feels moments of connection. Then Traudi says something that brings us up, reminding us of her past.

Since her release from prison for war crimes, Traudi has been financially supported by a mysterious person - we never do find out who. In the 1970s, when Helga visited, Traudi still had her SS uniform hanging in the wardrobe.

Perhaps one reason why people like Traudi cling on to their beliefs is to protect themselves from the truth, and the inevitable guilt that comes with it. The Holocaust is a huge crime. But it’s also clear that some people, be they Nazis or former Stasi, or perpetrators from some other regime, are utterly fixed in their opinions and contempt for many of their fellow human beings. Traudi, in her retirement home, is surrounded by people who are kinder to her than she deserves, precisely because they have the compassion she lacks.

‘Let Me Go’ is a terrifically powerful book, written with courage and honesty. Schneider conveys the experiences of those Germans who had to come to terms with who their parents were, and the crimes they’d committed. She turns a gut-wrenching meeting with a horrendous old woman into an important historical document.

Kara Kellar Bell is a film and media graduate from the West of Scotland, with a passion for European novels, French films, silent cinema, and Brazilian music (everything from Daniela Mercury and other pop stars through to bossa nova). As a writer, she likes to have room to move around creatively, so she’s not located in one genre. She writes realism and also stories of a more fantastic nature, usually grounded to some extent in the real world. She also takes delight in writing across the sexual spectrum, and as a bisexual, considers it important to remind people that things are not always black and white, either/or, in sexuality or in gender. For a selection of Kara’s writing on the Showcase section of this site, click here

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© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.