Review: Here There Are Blueberries Investigates a Nazi Photo Album

A mysterious album filled with photos of smiling happy Nazis picnicking and partying shows up at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007. The first page is inscribed, “Auschwitz, June 21, 1944.” Where did it come from, and how should archivists dedicated to preserving the memory of the millions killed in Nazi death camps handle it?

Tight and exquisitely staged, the play Here There Are Blueberries (based on actual events) answers those questions in a riveting 90 minutes. Developed by the Tectonic Theater Project, it is being staged at the New York Theatre Workshop from April 17 until June 2, with a terrific cast including Kathleen Chalfant (Angels in America) as the chief archivist.

A former U.S. military intelligence officer picked the album out of a trash can in a house in Frankfurt in 1946. Painstaking and emotionally draining research identified it as the personal album of Auschwitz chief of staff Karl Höcker.

The play’s title comes from the inscription on a photo of death camp administrators and their secretaries cheerfully spooning blueberries from bowls as they take a break from mass murder at a rustic countryside resort. As the play proceeds, Höcker’s mundane snapshots appear in the background on giant screens.

“The play endeavors to pose the question, ‘Where is the line between complacency, complicity, and culpability?’” says Tectonic producer Matt Joslyn. “Especially when we look at the human beings that are just like us who ran Auschwitz.”

The global rise of authoritarianism is increasing the risks of “genocide, mass killing or systematic violent repression” against ethnic minorities, notes a 2021 Minority Rights Group report. This superb play could not be more timely or more necessary.

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