Here There Are Blueberries, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Sidney Harman Hall, Washington, DC

 

Charlie Thurston and Nemuna Ceesay in Here There Are Blueberries. Photo by DJ Corey Photography.

Entering Sidney Harman Hall, the audience sees a small camera on a pedestal and the logo for Leica, a German company whose camera made photography accessible to a much wider audience. We are given this information in a sort of prologue, noting that during the 1930s photography became a hobby for a large number of Germans who documented their daily lives and maintained photo albums for the first time.

Shakespeare Theatre Company closes its season with Moises Kaufman’s Tectonic Theatre Project production of Here There Are Blueberries, one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking plays I have seen. Kaufman is credited in the program as conceiver, director, and co-author of the play along with Amanda Gronich, but as is Tectonic’s practice, members of the company aided in the development of the play. (Perhaps Tectonic’s most famous production was The Laramie Project, which focused on the citizens of Laramie, Wyoming, in the aftermath of Matthew Shepard’s brutal murder.)

The play raises questions about morality, integrity, complicity, and prejudice, especially relevant today as many politicians demand that we teach history without the parts they would rather not acknowledge because they might cause people to feel bad. This play is an excellent example of why we must examine history as a whole, the grim as well as the grand, in order to understand and, we hope, to avoid repeating the errors of the past. 

We know what we know from history because of the work of historians and researchers, based on what they have been able to examine. But what about those countless items that are never examined, because they were tossed aside as meaningless or fell into the hands of people unqualified to determine their worth? What history are we missing?

Blueberries is a docudrama based on the contents of a photograph album donated to Washington’s United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in 2007 by a retired U.S. Army officer who chose to remain anonymous. The donor found the album in an apartment he stayed in while stationed in Germany after the war. Fortunately, the album found its way to Rebecca Erbelding, an archivist and researcher at the museum, who recognized its potential importance.

Elizabeth Stahlmann (center), Charlie Thurston (spotlight), and the cast of Here There Are Blueberries. Projected are the photos of the helferinnen and Höcker enjoying blueberries. Photo by DJ Corey Photography.

This was an album full of photographs taken at Auschwitz, the largest and most famous of the German concentration camps, during 1944, at a time when approximately 400,000 Hungarian Jews (as well as many others) were killed there. But this album was different from previous records of Auschwitz: there is no evidence of the horrors that were taking place. The photographs showed the happy faces of Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) officers, many of whom would become infamous in the aftermath of World War II, among them “angel of death” Josef Mengele. But in addition to the camp’s commandants there were also German civilians, whom we learn were among the clerical and administrative staffs and the officers' families. We see them relaxing in the Solahütte, a “getaway” location on Auschwitz grounds where employees were often entertained. Time at the Solahütte was often given as a reward for outstanding work.

Erbelding, working with her supervisor, Judy Cohen, and the USHMM staff, determined that the album had been kept by Karl Höcker, who served as the adjutant (chief administrative assistant) to Richard Baer, the commandant at Auschwitz and later at Birkenau. One man who recognized his grandfather’s picture in the album contacted the museum and later connected with other descendants of people pictured, most of whom had no idea that their relatives had been involved in any way with what happened at Auschwitz.

Höcker, by the way, managed for many years to avoid being identified and prosecuted for war crimes. When he finally was identified and tried, he claimed to have been totally uninvolved in what was happening.

The Höcker album presented a major question for the museum’s curators. The museum’s focus is on the victims of the Holocaust, and they feared that publicizing the album’s contents might “humanize” the perpetrators of the violence. Overriding that fear, however, was the recognition that by focusing on the photographs, the close proximity of these administrators to the horrific extermination presented questions about what, if any, responsibility belonged to those people. Yes, many were “just” secretaries and telegraph operators, but if you are processing purchases of Zyklon B gas and sending and receiving messages to and from Berlin, and are working within mere kilometers of where the thousands of human beings are being gassed and then cremated, are there no clues that something very bad is happening? Or is this a case of willingly turning a blind eye because you have a job to do and if you don’t do it, someone else will?

The cast of Here There Are Blueberries with photos from the Höcker album projected. Photo by DJ Corey Photography.

An album of photographs was donated to Yad Vashem (the World Holocaust Remembrance Center) by Lili Jacob in 1983. Lili arrived at Auschwitz with other family members among the Hungarian Jews. The day the Jacob family arrived was the day after an assemblage of the camp’s staff pictured in the Höcker album. The Jacob album includes a photograph of Höcker on the day she arrived, countering Höcker’s claim of being uninvolved in what happened there. Lili Jacob survived because she was chosen for a work detail when she disembarked from the train; all of her other family members were sent to the gas chambers. She discovered the album by chance when staying in abandoned SS quarters after the war. She recognized her rabbi in one photo and later found photos of herself and other family members. It was eventually determined that the album had belonged to Richard Baer, the camp’s commandant.

Taken together, these two albums illustrate parallel worlds created by the SS: a pastoral setting for relaxation and laughter on the one hand, and a Hell on earth on the other; the first peopled by those who make the atrocities possible. The play’s title, Here There Are Blueberries, refers to a set of six photos of smiling helferinnen (young female communication specialists trained by the SS) with Höcker, all smiles, eating blueberries from bowls in the Solahütte, on July 24, 1944, while thousands are dying a short distance away. The title seems ironic, or perhaps even a cruel joke, for a play about events associated with Auschwitz.

How does a playwright turn the investigation of the origins of a photograph album into something dramatic? In the case of Blueberries, masterfully. Moving back and forth in time and drawing from hours of interviews with many of the USHMM staff as well as some descendants of those in the photos, we follow the solution of a mystery and engage in a moral journey about responsibility and inaction.

The cast is uniformly strong, slipping in and out of different characterizations. Each actor is credited as playing one major character “and others,” accomplishing those shifts with subtle changes such as posture or accent. Elizabeth Stahlmann shines as Rebecca Erbelding, leading us through the story while portraying Rebecca’s keen curiosity and passion for her work. Maboud Ebrahimzadeh is moving and earnest as the German who recognizes his grandfather in one of the photographs. Other cast members include Scott Barrow, Nemuna Ceesay, Erika Rose, Charlie Thurston, and Grant James Varjas, each of whom contributes sincerity and commitment.

I have long admired the work of Kathleen Chalfant, an actress whose career has been both prolific and profound. Chalfant as Judy Cohen commands the stage by simply being there. She is a joy to watch as part of this ensemble.

The great Kathleen Chalfant as Judy Cohen in Here There Are Blueberries. Photo by DJ Corey Photography.

It would not be possible to convey the story of these photographs without allowing the audience to actually see them. The set design by Derek McLane and projection design by David Bengali allow us not just to see but figuratively to enter the photographs, ingeniously depicted on small and large screens on the stage and, especially, utilizing the full stage-sized rear “wall” of the set. Dede Ayute’s costumes are simple but effective. Lighting by David Lander and sound by Bobby McElver also enhance the play.

Blueberries should be required viewing for those who wish to sanitize history, who might prefer thinking of Auschwitz as a place where there are blueberries rather than as a place where evil reigned incarnate. The play continues at Sidney Harman Hall through May 28.