"The Bonfire of Berlin" and "Let Me Go" by Helga Schneider

Helga, as a child was left with her younger brother while her mother left them to go and work as a camp guard at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her father remarried and Helga was left with her step-mother who not only loved her brother and led others to believe he was her own, but rejected Helga and had her lead a most unloved and uncomfortable life, including getting her sent to a juvenile asylum. After coming back "home" to her step mother things do not improve and she has to live along with all the other residents of their block in a small cellar with threat not only of bomb attacks but with starvation, thirst, disease and death. On top of that they live in constant fear of physical attacks and rapes from enemy soldiers stalking Berlin.

When her father returns she gains little comfort from him. She leaves Berlin at the end of the book.

Let Me Go is the sequel to The Bonfire of Berlin, Helga finally as an adult decides to confront Traudi, her mother. She wants to see not only if she regrets her actions as a camp and extermination guard at Auschwitz-Birkenau but to see if she regrets abandoning her post as mother to her two children, which even the Nazi Party with all their evil ideas would have been against.

Helga hopes from this final meeting with her mother to be able to forgive her in some way and it is up to the reader to interpret whether or not she fulfils this. I believe she was finally at peace and had closure to the situation when she finally left her mother, who although in old age and fragile mental state, still had the evil ability to justify and control her actions.

Two amazing books from a different view point than we are used to when reading about Germany in the second world war.