Update as of October 9, 2023: Due to unforeseen circumstances, our scheduled speaker, Moisés Kaufman, is unable to join us. Alternatively, we are delighted to announce Rebecca Erbelding, Ph.D. will join UC San Diego Department of Theatre Professor Allan Havis, M.F.A. in conversation.

In 2006, an album of photographs from Auschwitz landed on the desk of Rebecca Erbelding. The photographs documented the many ways SS camp guards made life for themselves at the German deathcamp tolerable, even enjoyable. As news of the extraordinary find spread around the world, a German businessman discovered his own grandfather in one of the pictures. What was he to do with this shocking discovery? This is the ethical dilemma at the heart of the play “Here there are blueberries,” a theatrical production adapted from Erbelding’s work on the album and directed by Moisés Kaufman.

Dr. Erbelding who holds a Ph.D. in American history from George Mason University is a historian and author of the prize-winning "Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe." She served as a historical advisor and an on-camera expert in Florentine Films’ "The U.S. and the Holocaust," directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein. 

About the Holocaust Living History Workshop

This event is a part of the Holocaust Living History Workshop (HLHW) series, an education and outreach program sponsored by the UC San Diego Library and the Jewish Studies program. It aims to preserve the memories of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust by offering public events involving witnesses, descendants and scholars and through the use of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive. Past HLHW workshops are now part of the Library’s digital collections and can be accessed online.

Sponsor: With support from Eleanor Roosevelt College