“HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES”: Performances are underway for “Here There Are Blueberries.” Produced by McCarter Theatre with La Jolla Playhouse, and directed by Moisés Kaufman, the play runs through February 9 at McCarter’s Matthews Theatre. Above, from left: Karl Höcker (Scott Barrow), adjutant to the Auschwitz commandant, leaves behind photos that are examined at the Holocaust Memorial Museum by Judy Cohen (Barbara Pitts), Tilman Taube (Luke Forbes), and Rebecca Erbelding (Delia Cunningham). As images are examined, actors (including Nemuna Ceesay) quote comments by the onscreen historical figures. (Photo by Dave Tavani)

By Donald H. Sanborn III

In 2007 the U.S. Holocaust Museum received a mysterious photo album. Retrieved by a U.S. counterintelligence officer, who donated it to the museum on the condition of anonymity, the album contained 116 photos taken at the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp.

The photos contained none of the images conveying the gruesomeness of the camp. Instead, they showed Nazi officers looking blithe and relaxed — as though they were on vacation — leading what appear to be normal lives, far removed from their grisly duties.

The album belonged to Karl-Friedrich Höcker, a bank teller turned Nazi. Höcker served as the adjutant to Richard Baer, the camp’s commandant (from May to December 1944). Clearly, the photos represent the way in which Höcker wanted to remember the camp; though their existence strikingly contradicts the Nazis’ efforts at secrecy surrounding its operation.

News of the resurfacing of Höcker’s album attracted the attention of descendents of the officers, who have been able to help identify their ancestors and the functions they held at the camp.

The album’s discovery also intrigued Tectonic Theater Project’s Founder and Artistic Director Moisés Kaufman, the son of a Romanian Holocaust survivor. Kaufman contacted Rebecca Erbelding, the head intake archivist at the museum, who granted him an interview that lasted longer than the allotted hour. The result of that initial conversation, along with subsequent interviews and analysis of the photos, is Here There Are Blueberries.

Conceived by Kaufman, and written by Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, the docudrama — a 2024 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama — portrays the study of the album by Erbelding and her colleagues. Their research becomes a point of departure for a probing of the camp’s final months; and a meditation on the necessity of the present to confront the past.

Directed by Kaufman, the production juxtaposes actors against real historical photos and some film footage. The staging epitomizes a perfect blending of live theater and multimedia.

This juxtaposition is present before curtain time. Entering McCarter’s Matthews Theatre, we hear popular musical hits of the early 1940s. On stage is a podium, on which rests a small portable camera. On a screen is projected a slide that reads, “Leica: the camera of modern times.”

Two characters enter and extol the ease with which the camera allows amateur photographers to take pictures from almost any location and angle. As they speak, we see commonplace, serene photos which, if they were contemporary, would not be out of place on an Instagram page. Only late in the sequence do we start to see swastikas, indicating the photos’ connection to the Nazi regime.

This prologue immediately establishes the tension between everyday happiness and unthinkable evil. At one point Erbelding reflects, “Asserting ordinariness in the face of the extraordinary is, in itself, an immensely political act.”

In her portrayal of Rebecca Erbelding, Delia Cunningham captures the archivist’s mixture of horror at the contents of the photos, and fascination at their discovery. Cunningham depicts Erbelding as a passionate historian who cannot rest until she has learned all that she can about the album.

Grant James Varjas plays the counterintelligence officer who donates the photos to the museum. Varjas plays the donor as reserved and edgy — someone who has learned to treat every interaction with extreme caution.

Derek McLane’s set consists mainly of desks for the museum researchers. David Lander’s lighting fulfills what is needed of it, while staying as dim as possible. Both McLane and Lander seem to be trying to keep their respective elements as unobtrusive as possible; as does Costume Designer Dede Ayite, who generally uses a restrained, somber color palette.

All three of these designers seem to have prioritized letting the audience focus on what, arguably, is the most important production design in this piece: David Bengali’s projections.

As the museum researchers discuss the subjects of the projected photos, individual officers are highlighted as they are discussed. Some of the photos are colorized (perhaps some film footage has always been in color), making them even more vivid, and reducing the cushion of remove offered by the number of intervening decades.

Sound Designer Bobby McElver adds a repeated click of photos being taken, letting this motif become almost a musical beat. McElver’s amplification heightens the eeriness of noises such as the Nazis’ laughter.

All of the actors play multiple roles. As subjects of photographs are shown, actors stand in front of their onscreen counterpart, quoting their remarks.

Scott Barrow is suitably officious as Höcker. The portrayal is characterized by delivering lines in a curt, haughty tone, suggesting efficiency and pride that might be commendable were they connected with almost any other job.

Initially, Rebecca’s colleagues at the museum — particularly Judy Cohen (played by Barbara Pitts), director of the museum’s photographic collection — are ambivalent (at best) about her study of the Höcker photos. The staff is concerned that exhibiting them would uplift the Nazi perpetrators at the expense of memorializing the victims.

However, as the museum’s receipt and study of the album becomes public knowledge, descendants of a few SS officers step forward with information, helping to identify some of the perpetrators in the photos.

The descendants include Tilman Taube (Luke Forbes), grandson of SS doctor Heinz Baumkötter, who conducted medical experiments on inmates; Peter Wirths (Varjas), son of Eduard Wirths, the chief SS doctor at Auschwitz-Birkenau, who selected which inmates were fit to work, and those whom would be sent to the gas chambers.

Rainer Höss (Marrick Smith) is the grandson of Rudolf Höss, the first commandant of Auschwitz. Smith is outstanding in his performance as the younger Höss. The portrayal captures the character’s short but convincing journey from fear that his grandfather’s violence is genetic, to determination that he will be a completely different person.

Many of the photos take place at the Solahütte, a vacation resort built by forced labor of Auschwitz prisoners. Visits to Solahütte were rewards for favored camp officers, one of whom successfully killed four prisoners who tried to escape.

Other guests, who appear in a series of photos — the caption for which gives the play its title — are members of the Helferinnen (“female helpers”), cheerful-looking young women who worked as communications specialists; the extent of their knowledge of the camp’s murderous functions is for Erbelding and her team to discover.

We also encounter Charlotte Schünzel (Nemuna Ceesay), a receptionist who arranged arrivals at Auschwitz; and Melita Maschmann (Jeanne Sakata), who soberly reflects on her role as the press and propaganda officer of the League of German Girls (a division of the Hitler Youth).

Late in the show we see a series of photos that is quite different from the ones we have been shown. They involve Lili Jacob (played by Cunningham), a prisoner who arrives at Auschwitz right after Höcker begins his duties there. Upon arriving, Jacob is separated from her family; the photos, which she discovers in a significant way, are all she has left of them.

Jacob and the photos of her give this piece much of its moral anchor. Having spent the first two thirds of the play engrossed in photos of jovial Nazis enjoying their day just as we might, we finally are allowed to confront the reality of Auschwitz’s horrors, and what the SS officers were doing. Arguably, this segment responds to much of the museum staff’s concern, expressed to Rebecca earlier, about memorializing the victims instead of the perpetrators.

Kaufman’s staging uses the juxtaposition of live actors against historical images to full effect. In one scene, actors recreate a photo in which SS officers are seen laughing and playing an accordion.

Other scenes underline the theme of present confronting past. A poignantly memorable tableau entails actors standing in front of the painfully iconic image of the train tracks leading to Auschwitz.
That moment encapsulates why Here There Are Blueberries needs to be in a theater, though undoubtedly it would be fascinating on film or TV. Like Erbelding, we — rather against our will — find ourselves fascinated by Höcker’s photos, chilling though they are. They become pieces of a puzzle that demands to be solved.

But seeing people on a live stage — in other words, people who are not images on a screen — probing these photos heightens the theme of the present confronting the past, for the sake of the future.

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“Here There Are Blueberries” will play at McCarter’s Matthews Theatre, 91 University Place in Princeton, through February 9. For tickets, show times, and further information call (609) 258-2787 or visit mccarter.org.