It’s a seemingly innocuous photo of a bygone era — teenage girls (and one young man) enjoying fresh blueberries with various expressions of joy on their young faces.
But it was the question of who these girls are, and where they’re located, that led Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich on a path of exploration — and, eventually, an acclaimed play.
That play is “Here There Are Blueberries,” which was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and which is making its Bay Area premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, running through May 11.
The play explores the true story of a photo album anonymously donated to the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in 2007. The image puzzled the museum’s curators, including Rebecca Erbelding, who was an archivist at the time and is dramatized as the play’s narrator. In time, the album was authenticated as originally belonging to Karl-Friedrich Höcker, a Nazi officer at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. It was later donated by an anonymous United States Lieutenant Colonel more than 60 years after the end of World War II.
Kaufman and Gronich were struck when they learned the girls were working as secretaries for a different officer, their glib nature reflected as the Nazis were in the final throes of their reign of terror. How could human beings find enjoyment while in close proximity to one of the most notorious prisons and death machines in history? It’s a question that inspired both Kaufman and Gronich to dig deeper.
“As soon as I saw that picture, I was mesmerized,” said Kaufman, whose 2000 play “The Laramie Project,” written along with members of the Tectonic Theater Project, is one of the nation’s most produced works (it played at Berkeley Rep during the company’s 2000-01 season). “Amanda and I are both children of Holocaust survivor families and I always wanted to write something about it, but it’s the event in history that’s most written about in literature. I always thought, what else is there to say? But when I saw these photos, I said this is something new to say.”
Acquiring photos taken inside Auschwitz has been elusive for historians, therefore the album that featured some of the most infamous figures in the Holocaust, including the brutal sadist doctor Josef Mengele, was a game-changing acquisition. On the theatrical side, Gronich had her doubts if a photo album was enough to lead to a dramatization, but found the through-line inside the irony.
“What we’re daring to explore here is the idea of how humans regard themselves in the midst of committing horrific acts,” Gronich said. “One reality is that we’re over here killing 1.1 million people, but the other is that we’re taking days off and sunning ourselves on the deck of a little rustic resort built 20 miles from the camp.
“The Nazis felt they were doing the right thing, and we need to examine that. We need to examine what happens when people see genocide from their point of view, thinking they are going to be the victor.”
The play arrives as the U.S. is being led by a president and administration that has spoken admiringly of Adolf Hitler and is already dismantling certain civil rights. Kaufman and Gronich have not shied away from the parallels, having started the writing during Donald Trump’s first presidential term, and opening the play when Joe Biden took office.
Kaufman pulls no punches reflecting his observations, with Trump advisor Elon Musk’s gesture at the 2025 presidential inauguration seeming to signify a Heil Hitler sign for the world to see.
“All works of art are contextual, and what has happened is we have an authoritarian president who is pushing the constitution to the breaking point, and now there’s a bunch of thugs in power,” Kaufman said. “And I think the way the audience is looking at the play today is radically different.”
Gronich understands the sensitivities of drawing equivalencies to the Holocaust, but believes it’s fair to draw those parallels to a very particular playbook that exploits the rise of fascism. At the same time, she has hope.
“It is successful in the short term, but there’s relief seeing that over the course of time, these fascist regimes eventually find their demise,” Gronich said. “One of the things that people who remember the Holocaust say is never again, we must never forget, we must never let this happen. I’m not comparing what’s happening in America directly to the Holocaust, but it is certainly to say, how do we see ourselves on the continuum of complacency, complicity and culpability? We have to ask ourselves that every day.”
David John Chávez is chair of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association and a two-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (‘22-‘23); @davidjchavez.bsky.social
‘HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES’
By Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, performed by Tectonic Theater Project and presented Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Through: May 11
Where: Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley
Tickets: $25-$134; berkeleyrep.org