The Blogs: The Nazis ate blueberries. Their grandchildren bear the scars | Jeffrey Salkin

Jeffrey Salkin reviews the play 'Here There Are Blueberries,' which opened on November 9, 2026, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The play, a 2024 Pulitzer finalist, examines an SS photo album from Auschwitz and the intergenerational trauma of perpetrators' descendants, featuring Rainer Höss, grandson of commandant Rudolf Höss.

Jeffrey Salkin reviews 'Here There Are Blueberries,' a play by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich that opened on November 9, 2026, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre for a 10-week run. The play, a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist, centers on a photo album from Auschwitz belonging to SS officer Karl Höcker, depicting SS personnel enjoying leisure time at Solahütte. It revisits themes of the banality of evil and compartmentalization, previously explored in 'The Zone of Interest' and works by Hannah Arendt and Robert J. Lifton. The play introduces Rainer Höss, grandson of commandant Rudolf Höss, who questions whether he inherited brutality and seeks to break the cycle for his children. Salkin connects this to his own podcast on intergenerational trauma and notes the play's display of the actual photos and a T-shirt with the line 'We don’t see what’s left outside the frame.'