Free Let Me Go by Helga Schneider Page B

into the gas chambers, but they did starve us appallingly: At night we dreamed of potatoes. And I had to confront all that without you. Because you weren't there; you had delegated your role as a mother to others so that you could follow your own path.
    Even in 1971 when I came to see you in Vienna with my son, not for a minute did you try to recover the time we had lost or reestablish any kind of relationship with me: You tried to get me to wear your SS uniform.
    And today, once again, I haven't had so much as a spark of genuine maternal warmth from you.
    I look at you and I remember the slender diary that my paternal grandmother gave me shortly before she died. My father had placed it in her hands, and she wanted to give it to me. From those pages I understood that Papa had never forgotten you, even though you had broken his heart. He had never forgotten you, in spite of pretty young Ursula, the girl "of good family" whom he had married the second time around.
    And I have never managed to erase you from my life either.
    "NO ONE WOULD have touched a hair on your heads." We're still on that topic.
    "During the war, didn't you ever wonder what had become of your children?" I've had that question inside me for so long. As I ask it, I notice with relief that her jaw is no longer trembling.
    She looks at me vacantly.
    "The war . . ." she repeats dreamily. "In Birkenau I didn't even notice it. I had so many things to do."
    She pushes back her hair.
    "But then the Russians came." Her face becomes animated again. "It was in January . . . yes, it was cold."
    The memory comes into focus. "The Russians arrived and treated us like criminals." Her voice is stung with outrage. "They threatened us with guns and forced us to take off our uniform jackets."
    She automatically makes the gesture of taking off her jacket.
    "They wanted to see the inside of our arms," she goes on, "to check if we had tattoos showing our blood group."
    Her teeth squeak strangely as she laughs.
    "The SS women didn't have the tattoo, you see?" She pulls back the sleeve of her jacket and reveals her arm. "You see, no tattoo." What I see is her wrinkled and alarmingly white skin.
    "But we put on the uniform," she repeats, growing more and more tearful, more and more senile, "we guards had SS uniforms. One comrade tried to be clever and said to the Russians, pointing at her uniform, 'Odolzhat! Odolzhat!' She wanted them to think she'd borrowed it. But the Russians beat her, shouting 'Lguna!'Liar, that's what they said."
    She wipes away a tear. "We were separated, men from women. We were sad. The men shouted 'Heil Hitler' from their truck, and the Russians beat them with their rifle butts, but some of them shouted 'Heil Hitler!' anyway, putting their lives at risk."
    I'M DISTRACTED. My thoughts return to the victims, to all the stories I know, the stories I've read or been told. I also think, Mother, that it's only by hating you that I could finally tear myself away from you. But I can't. I can't get that far.
    I've got to get back to her. She's noticed my detachment, and she's demanding attention.
    "Why have you stopped talking?" she asks sulkily.
    I feel tired and disappointed. By now I'm close to resignation. She's gone. I've seen her for the last time. I can start to bring this meeting to an end. I look at the clock.
    "I still have so many questions to ask you," I say prudently, "but I can see it's getting late. Soon you'll have to go to lunch and we—"
    "Ask, ask away," she says quickly, with a hint of anxiety.
    "Let's talk about your health," I suggest. "What do they do to you here? Do they give you any kind of treatment?"
    "Just ask about Birkenau," she pleads. "Because that's what you're interested in, isn't it?"
    Her expression is knowing and alert once again. Another of those astonishingly sudden changes of hers.
    Nonetheless, I try to keep to the direction I've set myself.
    "Talk to me about you," I insist. "So, do they give you any treatment? What do they