Theater Review by Carol Rocamora . . . .
A picture is worth a thousand words—so goes the saying
It can also change our way of looking at history . . . and ourselves.
Such is the power of Here There Are Blueberries, the riveting dramatic account of a stunning discovery made by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In 2006, an album containing 116 photos was sent to the museum by an 87-year-old retired US Lieutenant Colonel. He had found it in an abandoned apartment in post-Nazi Frankfurt, Germany while on assignment there in 1946, and kept it for sixty years. The album contained photos of the daily life of the administrators and staff at the Auschwitz concentration camp between June 1944 and January 1945. It contained no photos of the one million-plus Jews exterminated there—only of the camp’s daily and leisure activities in which the staff participated. The title of the play references one of the photos in particular: namely, of a group of smiling young women on a bridge one sunny afternoon, having been offered blueberries by an admiring Nazi officer. As they enjoy them, a man stands behind, playing an accordion.
How can the theater respond to such a stunning discovery?
In the hands of the Tectonic Theater Project, distinguished for its work in docudrama, the story of these photos—why they were assembled, how they were discovered, their significance, and their impact—is now unfolding in a powerful production at the New York Theatre Workshop. Under Moisés Kaufman’s expert, exacting direction (he is the author, along with Amanda Gronich), Here There Are Blueberries focuses on ten members of the museum staff (played by Tectonic’s versatile company members), initially paralyzed with shock, as they agonize over what to do with the album. They struggle with many questions: Who assembled these photos? Why did it take so long for the anonymous donor to present the album to the Museum? Why wasn’t it destroyed? Should the Museum have anything to do with this album, which depicts the Holocaust’s perpetrators and not its victims? What can the photos tell us? And what was happening outside of the frames of these photos? How much did the Auschwitz administrators and staff know about what was going on in the concentration camp?
These powerful, probing questions make for riveting theater—especially since the story is told from a variety of perspectives (the ten cast members play multiple roles). Leading the uncovering of this mystery is Rebecca Erbelding, archivist and historian of the Museum (played by Elizabeth Stahlmann with acute focus), along with Judy Cohen, curator of the Museum’s photography collection (played by Kathleen Chalfant, with equal intensity). The first step is identifying the individual who assembled the photos of the album. He turns out to be adjutant Karl Höcker, a 32-year-old administrative assistant to Auschwitz’s last commandant, Richard Baer. Höcker, son of a bricklayer and a former bank teller, was responsible for keeping a record of the camp’s daily activities, including sports team competitions, calisthenics, camping, weekend hikes, and group vacation trips to a mountain lodge, all featured in the photo collection.
Kaufman and his skilled design team augment the power of the story by projecting these hugely magnified photos on the back and side walls of the stage, above the Museum researchers at work at their desks. (Scenic design is by Derek McLane, lighting design is by David Lander). One by one, Höcker and others are highlighted individually, including Rudolf Höss, commander of the camp—as their photos are illuminated and a cast member explains their identity. Particularly chilling is the smiling countenance of Josef Mengele, the so-called “Angel of Death” of the Holocaust, who appears along with other members of the camp’s high command in one group photo, as they were celebrating the murder of 350,000 Jews at Auschwitz in the space of two months. Equally chilling is the beaming face of Höcker himself in another photo, as he enjoys the blueberries with the smiling “Helferinnen,” members of the young communications staff at Auschwitz (women aged 17-30).
In addition to the perspective of the Museum staff, there is also the devastating point of view of a German citizen named Tilman Taube (played by Jonathan Raviv). Upon seeing the album after it became public in 2007, Taube was shocked to identify his own grandfather, who, as it turns out, was a doctor at Auschwitz. Obsessed with this traumatic discovery, Taube reaches out for support to others like himself—including Höss’s grandson, who had also discovered his grandfather’s leading role in Auschwitz. “My grandfather built the largest killing center in all of history,” cries Rainer Höss (Charlie Thurston). “What if I too am a mass murderer? Everything I think I know about myself is a lie.”
Yet another perspective is offered by Höcker, the creator of the photo album (played effectively by Scott Barrow), who denies knowing anything about the Auschwitz gas chambers. (After the war, we learn, Höcker dropped out of sight, working again as a bank teller. He was eventually arrested, served two short prison terms, and died in 2000 at the age of 89).
Ultimately, for Kaufman and Gronich, authors of Blueberries, the dilemma of the photo collection is a moral one, as it was for the Museum. Can there be a play about the Holocaust that omits its victims? For that reason, Kaufman (son of Holocaust survivors) and Gronich added yet another perspective: that of Lili Jacob, a young Jewish girl who arrived with her family in Auschwitz from Hungary on May 26, 1944, the day after Höcker arrived. Her entire family—father, mother, and two brothers—were exterminated there. Lili survived. After the liberation, miraculously, she found a photo album in a deserted SS barracks. It contained 193 photos of Auschwitz prisoners, among whom Lili identified herself and members of her family. Historically, the album was among the only surviving photographic records of Jews in Auschwitz. “All I have left of my family is these photos,” she says. As Rebecca Erbelding explains with piercing irony, “The people depicted in Karl Höcker’s album are the same people who received and processed Lili Jacob and everyone aboard her transport.” Speaking of the album, Lili declares: “I feel it was my destiny to find it.”
Toward the end of her testimony, Lili poses a question: “God: if You were here before, where are You now?” Similarly, Kaufman and Gronich end their play with a provocative question about the photos, delivered by their moving ensemble: “Where are we in the story?”
As Moisés Kaufman (author of the famed The Laramie Project, a 1999 docudrama) elaborates in a post-performance discussion, “The Nazis were not monsters. They were people doing monstrous things.” The question for Kaufman is: “Where would our morality be in these circumstances?”
Though they leave that question for us to answer, the creators of Blueberries remind us that “the frontier between good and evil runs right through the middle of us . . . We need to find what’s been hidden . . . We must look for ourselves in every picture.” This provocative, profound new play is asking us to consider the shocking disconnect between these photos and the reality of what lies beyond their frames, and at the same time look at our own moral responsibility as human beings.
Here There Are Blueberries comes at the end of two theater seasons filled with compelling new works about the Holocaust and antisemitism (a list too long to mention here, but so worthy of our attention). Like these others, Blueberries asks us urgently to remember and to keep telling the story. In the words of one of its narrators, “Those who say nothing, they transfer this trauma to the next generation.” At the same time, Blueberries offers a new perspective, like the film Zone of Interest, winner of the Academy Award for Best International Film, that focuses on the daily life of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss and his family.
Tectonic’s docudrama—with its fierce and faithful adherence to fact, its courage in telling this story, and its powerful theatricality—is making a vital and momentous contribution to this growing body of dramatic works about this terrible chapter in world history.
Here There are Blueberries. Through June 16 at the New York Theatre Workshop (79 East 4th Street, between Second Avenue and the Bowery). 90 minutes, no intermission. www.nytw.org
Photos: Matthew Murphy