One of the writing prompts I used to use with my freshman English classes at UNM in Taos was to pass around an intriguing photograph and ask students to “write what you see – make a story out of it.” Then we would go around the room, where I’d set their chairs in a circle, and hear what each of the twenty-or-so students made of the image. They enjoyed the freedom and creativity of this exercise, and I enjoyed their many, varied, and vivid perspectives.
One of the photos I used for this exercise, I remember clearly, was of a group of pretty young women laughing and having fun – posing for the camera, sitting in a long row on a ledge, happily eating (it turns out) blueberries. It’s an old photo, from the early 1940s, taken at a mountain resort in Europe.
I had just discovered it in a New York Times article about a photo album that had been sent to the U.S. Holocaost Memorial Museum in 2007. The album itself contained more than one hundred photographs showing the everyday life of military officers and their secretaries – all of whom worked at Auschwitz.
(Caption to above photo: a group of women, secretaries and auxiliary workers, enjoying blueberries as an accordion player serenades them on the deck of a recreational resort that was a reward for the German camp staff of Auschwitz.)
I can’t remember now what my students’ written responses to the photo were, but I do recall they were all positive. None of these students had read the NYTimes article, so they had no idea what the true story behind this “fun” photo was. Who could have even imagined such a horror? On the surface, everything seems “normal” in the photo – just “girls being girls” on their day off. Kicking back. Eating fresh-picked blueberries in the summer sunshine to the sound of lively accordion music. What could be better?
I’ve since revisited that old photo online, and I’ve been studying it closely. One of the pretty blond German women looks just like a young version of my German mother (but to be clear, my mother was born in NJ, USA, to German immigrant parents in 1916). No doubt these young women were excellent workers (as was my mom) – quick, efficient, and ultraresponsible – assets to the smooth running of the camp.
Did they know what was going on in that camp? I have to believe they did. It’s said that the German people by and large were unaware of Hitler’s extermination of the Jews; they’ve pled innocense (or rather, ignorance) of the fact that millions of their countrymen were being tortured, experimented on, and systematically murdered. I have trouble believing this excuse. It’s true that news traveled a lot more slowly then than now. But still….But still. This went on for years.
The photo of these women eating blueberries, taken more than eighty years ago, and the album in which they were found continue to haunt. Just last year the new play, “Here There Are Blueberries,” by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama. The Pulitzer website (www.pulitzer.org) calls this play:
“An elegant and harrowing work of documentary theater that examines the provenance of a photo album from Auschwitz and probes the unsolvable mystery of how individuals can insist on normalcy while atrocity lurks outside the frame.”
I look more closely at this group of women today and wonder how they managed to live with themselves. Would a psychologist call it compartmentalization — a defense mechanism in which people mentally separate conflicting thoughts, emotions, or experiences to avoid the discomfort of contradiction? Maybe they truly believed they were doing good, faithfully serving the vaterland (fatherland)?
Maybe they saw themselves as nice little schaf (sheep), obedient to their all-powerful Führer (leader)? Maybe they went to church every Sunday morning and sent money home to their aging parents? Maybe they needed the job? Maybe some of them were sleeping with the handsomest officers and enjoying every orgasmic minute of it? Maybe they thought, like many people do, “all’s fair in love and war”?
I don’t know.
But what I’ve come to believe is that human nature hasn’t changed much, if at all, since then, and this photo proves it. More than half of the citizens of the United States, it seems to me, are behaving like those young women on the ledge – turning their backs on the truth of the evil being committed by their country, in their name, just outside the frame.
Let’s be honest: supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza is evil. Scapegoating immigrants and other vulnerable people is evil. Allowing heartless and soulless billionaires to slash programs that were created decades ago to help the poor and needy is evil. And the list only goes on.
I’ve been told by well intentioned people not to get so upset over all of this because it’s taking a toll on my health. I’m told I should think more positively, strive to be happier, find my joy. My response is: I’ll be joyful when I can no longer see photos and videos of skeletal, barely alive Palestinian babies and children writhing in small beds in bombed-out hospitals.
In the meantime, I must work on finding my voice and using it as clearly as I can. I cannot be happy and pop sweet blueberries in my mouth while the people of Gaza are being systematically starved by the Israeli government, and while the evil strongmen of this world (I’ll place Trump and Netanyahu at the top of this list) have their cruel way. Those of us who are aware of and awake to (Is this what “woke” means?) these horrors have a responsibility to at least try to wake others while there’s still time. Blueberries can wait.
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