2 weeks Ago
In 2007, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., received an album of photographs documenting the experience of those who worked at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The images provide a unique perspective on the Holocaust, chronicling S.S. officers going about their daily activities in a manner utterly divorced from the reality of the mass murder that was taking place nearby.
The album was donated by a U.S. intelligence officer who had found the cache of photos in Germany shortly after World War II.
After the photos were reviewed by the museum, news of the discovery made headlines all over the world. "In the Shadow of Horror, SS Guardians Relax and Frolic," the New York Times print headline, starkly captures the dichotomy that made these photos so gripping and disturbing. "Here There Are Blueberries," a play by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich that was a 2024 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama, tells the tale of this photo album in a stage production that makes the painstaking work of historical inquiry seem like the greatest detective story ever written.
Uncovering the identities of the figures in the photos is a central part of the investigation, but the bigger mystery is what could have allowed ordinary Germans to become part of the bureaucracy of death that resulted in the extermination of approximately 6 million Jews. Advertisement The company of "Here There Are Blueberries." (Tectonic Theater Project) Kaufman, who conceived and directed the play for his New York-based company, Tectonic Theater Project, was sitting in a Midtown Manhattan office with co-writer Gronich just a couple of days before they left for Los Angeles, where "Here There Are Blueberries" will be performed at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts through March 30 before it heads to Berkeley Rep in April.
How did they conceive the idea of making a theater piece around an album of photos? "I saw the front-page article in the New York Times and was struck...
Charles McNulty.
