‘Here There Are Blueberries’ Finds New Urgency in Its Unflinching Reckoning With Nazi Evil

In May 2024, “Here There Are Blueberries,” a play inspired by the discovery of a collection of photographs documenting the everyday lives of men and women who had helped Hitler carry out the Final Solution at Auschwitz, opened off-Broadway. The reviews were mostly positive, but one leading critic agonized over the production’s lack of historical context, noting that this new presentation of the show, which had premiered in California back in 2022, did not in any way address the war in Gaza.I remember reading the article and wondering how that war, or any opinions about the Israeli government’s actions after the October 7 massacre — which at that point was only seven months in the past — could qualify our understanding off, or add new perspective to the systematic slaughter of six million people before the Jewish state was even founded.As a secular Jew with Holocaust survivors in my family, I’ll admit I had a surprisingly dispassionate reaction to “Blueberries” when I first saw it more than two years ago. Playwright and director Moisés Kaufman, who conceived the one-act piece and developed it with Tectonic Theater Project, and his cowriter, Amanda Gronich, have taken a soberly docudramatic approach. The actors juggle the roles of real people whose interviews, along with historical transcripts and other primary sources, informed the play.These characters, who usually address the audience directly, include Nazis and their collaborators and descendants, though the most prominent are archivists at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. We first meet Rebecca Erbelding, the historian who in December 2006, while working there, received a letter from a retired American military officer claiming to have an album of World War II-era photographs. That item turned out to be the personal collection of one Karl Höcker, who served as administrative assistant and adjutant to Richard Baer, the SS commandant in charge of operations at the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camps. The photos contained within show workers at the camps and some of their leaders enjoying leisure time: gathering for parties, vacationing at a chalet where they were rewarded, as it’s explained, “for services rendered,” and, yes, eating blueberries.These images, ever present in David Bengali’s projection design, are as central to “Blueberries” as its text, and in a larger theater, they become an even more vivid testament to the banality of evil. There have also been political and cultural shifts since “Blueberries” was last produced in New York, taking us even further in a direction where a certain faith and ethnicity can be conflated—for all protestations otherwise—with the government of a foreign country that is questioned not only for its policies and strategies but for its right to exist. In this context, Mr. Kaufman and Ms. Gronich’s earnest script—which, for what it’s worth, points out that there have been other examples of genocide—and Mr. Kaufman’s measured direction carry a new potency. The excellent actors all emphasize clarity and straightforwardness; even portraying war criminals or their sometimes tortured progeny, they never overplay their lines.Kathleen Chalfant in ‘Here There Are Blueberries.’ Matthew MurphyBroadway newcomer Delia Cunningham lends an unmannered urgency to Rebecca, while the great Kathleen Chalfant brings customary authority and dignity to the role of Judy Cohen, head of the museum’s photo archive. Montego Glover has a particularly chilling turn as Melita Maschmann, head of press and propaganda for the Bund Deutscher Mädel, or League of German Girls, the female branch of the Hitler Youth, some of whom were chosen to join the Helferin, a group of “racially pure” young women often recruited to work and mate with SS officers.Ms. Cunningham also appears, in the play’s most gutting scene, as Lili Jacob, an Auschwitz survivor who upon being liberated at Dora-Mittelbau unearthed another photo album, this one containing pictures of Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. Among those pictured were Lili and members of her family. She recalls how her parents and brothers were chosen for one line — the one headed to the gas chambers — while she was judged fit for work.As images of men, women, and children facing torture and death loom above the stage, Lili recounts trying to run to her relatives but being stopped by a guard and forced to watch as they were marched off, never to return. “And I remember thinking,” she tells us, “‘God, if You were here before, where are You now?’”It’s a question that has, of course, been asked countless times in response to all manner of injustice and despair, and it’s still being posed today. But “Here There Are Blueberries” reminds us, at an especially crucial time, that the darkest chapters in history can and should be considered on their own terms.

‘Here There Are Blueberries’ Finds New Urgency in Its Unflinching Reckoning With Nazi Evil

‘Here There Are Blueberries’ Finds New Urgency in Its Unflinching Reckoning With Nazi Evil

More from the New York Sun

Apple’s Overlooked MacBook Pro Gets an Upgrade

Modern Family, Familiar Friction

Democrats in New Jersey Want Disliking Muslims To Be Illegal

The Few, the Proud, the A-Listers: When the Marines and Hollywood Had a Ball

Tiger Woods Celebrates a New Chapter as Phil Mickelson Faces Golf’s Locked Doors

Former Trump Administration Health Advisor Targets Susie Wiles for MAHA Morass

The Rush to Judgment on Hegseth

Nations Clamor To Assist Deluged Gaza While a Reconstituted Hamas Raises Few Objections

More from the New York Sun

Apple’s Overlooked MacBook Pro Gets an Upgrade

Modern Family, Familiar Friction

Democrats in New Jersey Want Disliking Muslims To Be Illegal

The Few, the Proud, the A-Listers: When the Marines and Hollywood Had a Ball

Tiger Woods Celebrates a New Chapter as Phil Mickelson Faces Golf’s Locked Doors

Former Trump Administration Health Advisor Targets Susie Wiles for MAHA Morass

The Rush to Judgment on Hegseth

Nations Clamor To Assist Deluged Gaza While a Reconstituted Hamas Raises Few Objections