What's Wrong With This Picture?

“Here There Are Blueberries,” The Wallis, Beverly Hills, Mar. 13 – 30, 2025

Mar. 16, 2025 | By Bruce R. Feldman

In Brief: A mesmerizing account that focuses on the perpetrators rather than the victims of Nazi genocide during World War II.

The company of Here There Are Blueberries. (Photo: Rich Soublet)

In Here There Are Blueberries, a frayed album of photographs taken at Auschwitz arrives at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. At first the researchers and historians there are perplexed. These pictures aren’t what they expected to see.

The photos don’t depict victims of Nazi atrocities or of the camp’s fortified walls, barbed wire, platforms, barracks, gallows, gas chambers and cremation ovens.

The subjects are the German officers and civilian staff who worked at the camp. The images are candids, showing cheerful groups at parties and on weekend outings, enjoying themselves, as if the unspeakable cruelty of their surroundings didn’t exist.

The message of this tense, compelling drama is clear: Ordinary people can commit horrendous acts without malicious intentions. They either ignore or don’t consider the grave consequences of their actions, what Hannah Arendt famously called “the banality of evil.”

Written by Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, the documentary drama is based on real events that started in 2007.

"Six million people didn't kill themselves. It's important that we are also studying the psychology of the people who did this.”

– Moises Kaufman

The story follows the archivists as they attempt to authenticate the photos, understand their significance, identify the individuals and settings, and grapple with the question of how to exhibit the images or even whether or not to put then on display at all. The mission of the museum is to focus on the victims of genocide and to not give any exposure to the perpetrators or to normalize them in any way.

The quest widens beyond the museum’s walls, as the researchers seek out the grandchildren of the camp’s Nazi officers. The archivists want to know, need to know as much as possible about the photos before they are shown to the public.

Underlying all of their efforts and frustrations is the stark contrast between the mundane and the horrific that the images represent. Questions of culpability and complicity also arise. It’s not lost on us that, as Kaufman has said, “Those issues are important in American culture right now. The play is very timely.”

Each of the 10-member cast in this thoughtful, compact, well-oiled production plays multiples roles, and they do so effectively and with abiding humanity. Kaufman’s direction is both fluid and meticulous, exquisitely sustaining the dramatic tension over the show’s 90-minute duration.

That’s all the time he needs to break our hearts and give us an unforgettable evening of theatre and self-reflection.

“Here There Are Blueberries," The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 746-4000, www.thewallis.org