‘Here There Are Blueberries,’ at McCarter Theatre Center, tells a chilling World War II story

MATTHEW MURPHY

Cast members look at a vintage photo of Nazis in “Here There Are Blueberries.”

In 2007, Rebecca Erbelding — an archivist at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. — received a letter from a retired U.S. lieutenant colonel, saying he was considering donating an album full of photos taken at the Auschwitz concentration camp, during World War II. He said he had found the album in an abandoned apartment when he was stationed in Germany, soon after the war ended.

Erbelding felt certain, at first, that he must be mistaken.

“There are very few photographs of Auschwitz in existence,” says Erbelding in the 90-minute, one-act play “Here There Are Blueberries,” which Tectonic Theater Project is currently presenting at The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton. “The Nazis did not want to leave evidence of what they were doing there.”

Erbelding, played by Delia Cunningham in this production, wrote a polite letter back, asking the lieutenant colonel to send the album to the museum, so they could take a look. Once he did, she immediately recognized that, yes, these black-and-white images were from Auschwitz.

Then she noticed something else. The album had 32 pages, and contained 116 photographers. And they were all of Nazis. No prisoners were shown.

MATTHEW MURPHY

Scott Barrow in “Here There Are Blueberries.”

“Here There Are Blueberries” — co-written by Moisés Kaufman (the artistic director of Tectonic Theater Project, and the director of this production) and Amanda Gronich — was called “documentary theater,” last year, when it was honored as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It tells the story of how museum employees came to realize the significance of the photos — the who, what, when and where of them — and how they decided what to do with them. But some of the play also feels like a lecture, with the actors standing still, facing the audience, and supplying information that is necessary to understand the story, and its ramifications.

Scenic designer Derek McLane and lighting designer David Lander give the play a sleek, modern look. But the tone, throughout, is sober and serious. This is a weighty subject, after all, and Erbelding and her colleagues work for a weighty institution, with a weighty mission.

There is internal debate, at the museum, about what to do with these photos. Should they be displayed? Should the press be alerted? Everyone who sees the photos is astonished by them. But the museum’s policy is to focus on the victims, not the perpetrators. And these photos show only the perpetrators.

Still, as Erbelding says, “6 million people didn’t murder themselves.” In other words, to tell the whole story of Auschwitz, and World War II, these photos were essential.

That everyone could look so cheerful while working at a concentration camp is something that will haunt anyone who sees the photos (and in the course of the play, many are projected onto large screens, so we can see them). One photo even shows a Christmas party. The mundanity of it all — given the circumstances — is unimaginable, until you see it.

Erbelding becomes “obsessed,” she says, with the photos.

MATTHEW MURPHY

From left, Elizabeth Stahlmann, Nemuna Ceesay and Scott Barrow in “Here There Are Blueberries.”

Working like detectives, museum workers deduce that the album belonged to Karl-Friedrich Höcker, who was an administrative assistant (i.e., a right-hand man) to Richard Baer, the camp commandant in 1944 and 1945. The son of a bricklayer, Höcker was a bank clerk before he joined Hitler’s S.S. (Schutzstaffel) paramilitary organization. He fought in the war before suffering a minor injury that led to him being reassigned to Auschwitz.

For him, it was a great accomplishment to rise in the ranks as far as he did, and have a position of power at Auschwitz. Photos in his album show him hobnobbing with other officers, and even vacationing at Solahütte, an isolated riverside chalet that Nazis who worked at Auschwitz used for rest and relaxation.

“You can see how happy he is with his good fortune,” says a museum worker.

The album is deemed a “memory book for his time at the camp”: something Höcker kept so he could look back at it, and remember the good times. No wonder no prisoners are shown. It’s a form of mental compartmentalization: Never think of those who are being hurt by what you are doing.

The play’s title, “Here There Are Blueberries,” comes from an inscription in the album, under six photos showing Höcker and a group of young women — Auschwitz office workers — having a grand old time, eating blueberries at Solahütte. “How much did they know? What would I have done?” asks Erbelding, adding that she is about the same age as these women. “I want to believe they knew nothing.”

The play also tells the story of a German man whose grandfather was a Nazi. He sees his grandfather in photos included in an online article about the album, gets in touch with the museum, and offers to help with the identification. Visiting the museum, he is able to learn more about his grandfather’s life. Subsequently, he works on getting more Nazi descendants to come forward and supply information.

The play also, eventually, tells the story of another album, found at the end of the war, and showing photos of the prisoners. Its story is told — the photos were taken around the same time as the Höcker album — and photos from it are shown. The play achieves a kind of balance.

“We need to find what’s been hidden,” says Erbelding. “We have to look for ourselves in every picture and ask, ‘Who are we in this story?’ ”

The McCarter Theatre Center will present “Here There Are Blueberries” through Feb. 9. Visit mccarter.org.