BWW Previews: I AM HARVEY MILK comes to the Folly in Kansas City

Steve Wilson | BroadwayWorld.com

Heartland Men's ChorusThe Heartland Men’s Chorus unites with the St. Louis Gateway Men’s Chorus to bring I Am Harvey Milk, to the stage of the Folly Theater in Kansas City, Mo. The celebration of the life of civil rights icon Harvey Milk takes the stage on March 29 and 30. Preceding the Kansas City performance, the choruses will present a free preview on March 8 at 7 p.m., at the Missouri United Methodist Church in Columbia, Mo. An encore performance will take the stage of the Washington University’s 560 Music Center in St. Louis on April 5.

I Am Harvey Milk, written by composer Andrew Lippa, is the tragic story of Milk’s life from childhood to his assassination in 1978. Six gay men’s choruses including the Heartland Men’s Chorus joined to together to commission the work in 2013.

Milk was the first openly gay elected officer in California when he secured a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. In 11 months in office, he was responsible for the passing of stringent gay rights ordinances in the city. “It’s not a straight-forward biography,” says Rick Fisher Executive Director of the Heartland Men’s Chorus. “The songs touch on universal themes including bullying, activism, and the building of community.” In 2009, he posthumously was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us,” wrote Anne Kronenberg his final campaign manager. The production features individual sets with repertoire by the St. Louis and Kansas City choruses before they come together for Lippa’s I Am Harvey Milk.

Conducting the Kansas City performance is Dr. Tim Seelig, the conductor the world premiere in San Francisco in 2013. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus first appeared in public at a candlelight vigil the night that a former city employee assassinated Milk and Mayor George Moscone. “This is not a story specific to San Francisco,” says Seelig. “This is about a man who stepped forward and did something remarkable, even though he was not particularly remarkable by most accounts. It is about a man who became a hero and martyr for what he believed. Composer Andrew Lippa‘s goal was that every single person who hears this will somehow resonate with the person who was Harvey Milk and look for the part of Harvey within them.”

Joining Seelig and the 200 members of the combined choruses will be soprano Sylvia Stoner, tenor Tom Lancaster as Harvey Milk, and 12-year old Cam Burns as the young Harvey.

Purchase tickets for I Am Harvey Milk at the Heartland Men’s Chorus website or order by phone at 816-931-3338.

Heartland Men’s Chorus end the season with an outstanding show

Steve Wilson | Examiner.com

The Folly Theater in downtown Kansas City, Mo. came to life Saturday June 8 with the summer concert of the Heartland Men’s Chorus. The program titled Heart and Soul, Music of the 50’s closes out the 2012-2013 season.

This was yet another fantastic performance by the members of the Heartland Men’s Chorus. Many of the songs were uplifting, toe tapping and from the sounds around the lower balcony, being sang by several members of the audience. Audience participation was encouraged especially during the “Mitch Miller Medley.” In the program was a sheet with the music to several numbers including “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and “Shine On, Harvest Moon” among others. Josh Krueger performed a solo during the sing along of “Hot Diggity.”

Each year a chance to be a guest conductor is raffled off to the audience. This year during the sing along the winner conducted the song “Heart Of My Heart.” She was later called on to again appear on stage, not as a conductor, but as Mona Lisa, as the chorus sang the song of the same name.

The first act ended with “Triplets And Timpani Medley,” which included a solo by Jeff Williams, performing “Be My Love.” Several songs were accompanied by both male and female dancers. Though the choreography was appropriate the actual dancing may have been missing a few steps. Even with the minor timing errors they were fun to watch and added to the entertaining chorus.

Inside the chorus is a group of six men known as the Heartaches and includes Todd Kendall Gregory-Downs, Jeff Williams, Brandon Shelton, John Edmonds, Shawn Revelle and Dana Wood. The group sang “Standing on the Corner” and then opened the second act with “Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream)” and then performed “Why Do fools Fall In Love.” As fabulous as the entire chorus is, it still is enhanced by the Heartaches. The second act proved to be even more upbeat than the highly enjoyable first act with songs like “Jailhouse Rock,” “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Catch A Falling Star.”

One of the highlights of the show was baritone John Edmonds solo of “I Went To Your Wedding” during the “Wedding Medley.” The hilarity that ensued when Edmonds began to cry an exaggerated sobbing as he sung had the audience laughing and giggling through the entire number. The creativity of the number was remarkable.

Though this production is the jukebox sounds of the fifties the Heartland Men’s Chorus was not to be outdone by the likes of such superstars as Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey. During a dance number a female dancer wearing a poodle skirt was faced with the dreaded wardrobe malfunction. After trying to continue dancing while holding it up she finally had to run off stage clasping onto it tightly. Her dance partner looked like a lost puppy as he started to dance alone and then ran off following her.

The show continued on Sunday. The only regret of the show is that it is the last one until December when the chorus performs “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” to kick-start their 2013-2014 season.

Gay choir’s OU concert could open hearts, minds, dialogue

Jeanny Sharp, editor and publisher | Ottawa Herald

It’s easy to have an opinion when the issue doesn’t require you to be informed or have a personal investment. When it hits closer to home, however, maintaining a staunchly black-and-white opinion gets far more difficult. Republican U.S. Sen. Portman learned that the hard way. The Ohio lawmaker now is doing some back-pedaling on one specific issue — same-sex marriage — two years after his son disclosed he is gay.

For most people, “marriage equality” is a complicated issue that continues to evolve as more and more people they know and respect “come out” as gay. The number of people polled who are in favor of same-sex marriage continues to grow, with a recent ABC News-Washington Post poll saying 58 percent of people support it. The U.S. Supreme Court soon might rule on the legality of the issue, but in the meantime some people still are coming to terms with accepting gays as equals.

For those who want to learn more about gays’ struggles — in a safe and non-judgmental environment — Ottawa University has the perfect opportunity this week. The Heartland Men’s Chorus from Kansas City is expected to present a concert — titled “When I Knew” — 7 p.m. Wednesday at Fredrikson Chapel, 1011 S. Cedar St. The concert is free, though a free-will offering will be taken to support the choir’s outreach efforts.

The university took a political risk by playing host to the choir, but it also shows the college’s willingness to embrace diversity, much like Sen. Portman did last month. Here’s an excerpt from a column in the Yale Daily News, written by Portman’s son, Will, a junior at Trumbull College, which is part of Yale University.

“I’m proud of my dad, not necessarily because of where he is now on marriage equality (although I’m pretty psyched about that), but because he’s been thoughtful and open-minded in how he’s approached the issue, and because he’s shown that he’s willing to take a political risk in order to take a principled stand. He was a good man before he changed his position, and he’s a good man now, just as there are good people on either side of this issue today.

“We’re all the products of our backgrounds and environments, and the issue of marriage for same-sex couples is a complicated nexus of love, identity, politics, ideology and religious beliefs. We should think twice before using terms like ‘bigoted’ to describe the position of those opposed to same-sex marriage or ‘immoral’ to describe the position of those in favor, and always strive to cultivate humility in ourselves as we listen to others’ perspectives and share our own.

“I hope that my dad’s announcement and our family’s story will have a positive impact on anyone who is closeted and afraid, and questioning whether there’s something wrong with them. I’ve been there. If you’re there now, please know that things really do get better, and they will for you too.”

Portman is just one of three Republican lawmakers who support gay marriage. Portman’s situation might just be the beginning, as more people come out and their loved ones accept them — regardless of their sexual orientation. The senator’s situation also is emblematic of the need for society to focus on inclusiveness, rather than exclusivity. Only then will things truly get better for everyone concerned.

Note: the editorial above was published the day after the following “Letter to the Editor” was published:

Sodomites Coming to Town

Back in the mid-1960s, I was invited to hear a guest speaker at Ottawa University. Commenting on a statement by a pseudo-theologian, Dr. Nels Ferre, who suggested in his book, “The Sun and the Umbrella,” that Jesus was the bastard son of a German soldier and that Mary was a harlot who hung around a German mercenary camp, the proposed speaker said something to the effect, “And who can say that these words are not true?”

Having no longer Biblical scruples for truth, it is not surprising that Ottawa University would have the Sodomites come to town.

Paul sees the same pattern in Romans 1 where they “changed” the glory of the incorruptible God. Having departed from Biblical Doctrine, they soon became filthily corrupt themselves. (Romans 1:27) “And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.”

He probably was referring to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as the recompense. (Genesis 19) Philo, who lived around the time of Christ, said the smoke of these cities was still rising in his day. That would be 2,000 years later.

As Bill Grasham once said, “If America gets away with such filth, God will have to apologize to these filthy cities.” Pray for revival!

—    Daryl McNabb, pastor, Peniel Bible Church, Waverly

Gay men’s chorus bringing message to OU campus

Bobby Burch | Ottawa Herald

Upcoming choral performance at Ottawa University is expected to help fight bullying and teen suicide.

Sponsored by OU’s Student Welcoming and Affirming Network, the Heartland Men’s Chorus plans to perform its “When I Knew” concert, focusing on members’ personal stories of when they realized they were gay. The free concert is set for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at OU’s Fredrikson Chapel, 1011 S. Cedar St.

“The main focus of this particular performance is to help combat bullying in our schools and to help prevent teen suicide,” Dr. Joe Nadeau, a professor of choral studies at OU and 15-year artistic director of Heartland Men’s Chorus, said Friday. “We’re coming to Ottawa to share the message of inclusivity and that no how matter how difficult your life may seem at the moment, it will get better.”

The Wednesday evening program, which Nadeau likened to a musical documentary, features narration, visuals and original arrangements that focus on social issues, as well as accompanying the stories of chorus members. Their accounts, he added, are intended to embrace diversity, promote open-mindedness and reach out to those confused about or ostracized for their sexuality. While the concert is free and open to the public, Nadeau said donations will benefit the OU Student Welcoming and Affirming Network.

The Kansas City-based chorus group, which has been “singing out” for 27 years, regularly performs with more than 150 singers, its website reads. Initially founded with 30 singers as a haven for those suffering from the AIDS virus, the nonprofit group has continued to grow and now travels across the globe. The chorus performs a variety of music, including jazz, Broadway, popular and classical works, its website said.

The “When I Knew” performance, in part, was inspired by the work of the It Gets Better project, Nadeau said. That project, he added, is geared toward young gay people who are struggling with their identities and might have contemplated suicide as a result of bullying, he said. Through thousands of personal stories, the It Gets Better project aims to communicate to gay and transgender youth that their lives will get better, in addition to creating the changes to make a more inclusive world, its website reads. The website features videos from people around the world, including President Obama.

Nadeau said he already has encountered an enthusiastic response about the Wednesday concert from OU faculty members and the community.

“The faculty sounds excited about the program,” Nadeau said. “It’s important to promote open-mindedness and important to promote diversity.”

KC chorus tackles Nazi persecution of gay people

Maria Sudekum | Associated Press

The lives of gay men in Germany in the early 20th century — from their freedom in Berlin’s rowdy nightclubs in the 1920s to their persecution under the Nazis a decade later — are the focus of an upcoming production by the Heartland Men’s Chorus.

“It’s an important chapter in history, and the history of gay men,” said Tom Lancaster, marketing director for the Kansas City-based chorus. “It’s one that is really underrepresented, and it’s a part of the Holocaust that a lot of people aren’t aware of. … Even people who were aware gays were persecuted under the Nazis, they weren’t aware of the scope.”

The Heartland Men’s Chorus, a nonprofit group that often takes on social issues for its programs, performs the two-act “Falling in Love Again” Saturday and Sunday at Kansas City’s Folly Theater. The program also includes a companion exhibit from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The small exhibit, “Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945,” runs through April 10 at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

The Nazis, who killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, considered homosexuality an aberration. They didn’t try to exterminate all German homosexuals, but thought they could change them or isolate them with treatment that included imprisonment, castration and hard labor at concentration camps, according to the Holocaust Museum. The Nazis sent anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 homosexual men to the concentration camps, the museum says.

The chorus performance opens with a musical glimpse of what gay men experienced in the liberal Germany of the 1920s when “Berlin had more gays bars than New York in the 1980s,” Lancaster said. The music in that portion of the program includes selections from Cabaret, Cole Porter’s “Love For Sale” and “The Lavender Song,” considered to be among the first gay anthems.

The second half of the program is based around an opera, “For A Look Or A Touch,” and portrays the treatment gay men endured under the Nazis, beginning in 1933 when Hitler came to power. The opera, based on interviews from the documentary, “Paragraph 175,” tells the story of one gay man who survived the Nazis and another who died during that time. Baritone Morgan Smith and actor Kip Niven portray the couple. A dance performance choreographed by William Whitener, artistic director of the Kansas City Ballet, is also part of the performance.

Fran Sternberg, with the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education in Overland Park, Kan., said the HMC program is important “because of the kind of homophobia that still lingers.”

“We need to know where that kind of thing leads,” Sternberg said. “Everybody needs to know about this. … The important thing to understand is the Nazis come to power legally, and they campaigned in regular elections and people voted for them.”

Heartland Men’s Chorus Explores Love, Before And After the Holocaust

Laura Spencer | KCUR

In the 1920′s and into the early 1930′s, there was a thriving gay culture in Europe, especially in Berlin. But, with the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, that all changed.

The Heartland Men’s Chorus explores the music of the period, and a tale of two lovers sent to concentration camps – and their different fates – in a program called “Falling In Love Again.”

Listen to interview highlights online

The two sides of falling in love with Heartland Men’s Chorus

Kellie Houx | KC Studio

Heartland Men's ChorusIn major cities across Europe such as London, Paris and Berlin during the 1920s and the first couple of years of the 1930s, gay culture boomed. Cabarets popped up and the bawdy nightlife hit an all-time high. Then in just a few years the Nazi regime took the raucous gay culture of pre-war Berlin and made illegal. These two seemingly incongruous topics make up the two halves of Heartland Men’s Chorus spring show, Falling in Love Again. The shows are at 8 p.m. March 23 and 4 p.m. March 24 at the Folly Theater.

Dr. Joe Nadeau, artistic director of Heartland Men’s Chorus since 1998, calls Falling in Love Again a dramatic presentation. “It’s more of an event than a concert. Many people think of the history of the gay civil rights movement with the Stonewall riots in 1969 or Harvey Milk in 1978. Decades before in Berlin, Paris and London, there was a thriving gay community. This concert offers two parts; first that pre-1933 gay world of Berlin with the bawdy, gender-bending world with some very suggestive material that demonstrates the excitement before the Holocaust. Then in 1933, it’s like the whole gay community got shut down. That will be the second half of the show. It will be looking at reclaiming and finding love in your life.” Nadeau says the first half will have music from shows such as Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret and Three Penny Opera. Marlene Dietrich’s “Falling in Love Again” will be part of the show as will “The Lavender Song” (“Das Lila Lied”), a cabaret song written in 1920 that is often considered one of the first gay anthems.

Act II features the Midwest premiere of Jake Heggie’s For a Look or a Touch, a stirring tale of two lovers sent to the Nazi concentration camps — one who is exterminated and one who lives to recount a love lost and unspoken. Guest baritone Morgan Smith and actor Kip Niven join HMC to present this moving tribute to the power of love in the midst of devastating circumstances. Two Berlin teens, Manfred Lewin and Gad Beck, loved each other before Lewin and his family were arrested by the Nazis. Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer took Lewin’s entries in the tiny journal he wrote as a gift to Beck. Lewin and his family died in Auschwitz; Beck survived and lived in Berlin until his death in late June 2012 at the age of 88. In Look, cast as a staged song-cycle, Lewin’s ghost, sung by Smith, forever 19, visits the elderly Beck, played by Niven, asking him to revisit memories he’s kept buried. Lewin’s songs are interspersed with Beck’s spoken narration.

Niven has been a fan of the Heartland Men’s Chorus for years. He also met Nadeau when Nadeau was the music director at his daughter’s middle school. “We became friends. Joe knew I was an actor and that I started a group called E.A.R.Th (Equity Actors’ Readers’ Theatre). We rehearsed next door to the Women’s Chorus, which Joe directs, and he reached out to me in August of last year. Any actor would be interested in this, but it has particular resonance for me. I am liberal in my politics, particularly social issues. When people wield hatred against those who are not alike, it becomes a touch point for me.”

Niven says he looks forward to giving voice to Beck and his plight for Kansas City audiences. “Leading to World War II, Berlin was in its heyday of indulgence and then the world turned on itself to be one of the most terrifying times in history. Certainly being a Jew, gay, or gypsy was not tolerated. Not quite a direct parallel, but the journal of Lewin to Beck personalizes a greater story. It’s similar to those who read Anne Frank. It’s difficult to wrap your mind around 6 million people when the story can be brought closer with two people or a family like the Franks. It seems more approachable to understand the loss, pain and survivor guilt.”

Niven says he wants audiences to listen to the story and hear the humanity. “People were indeed slaughtered for their uniqueness.” Nadeau saw the first performance of For a Look in Seattle. “It’s a life-changing concert with healing and power. We are offering the Kansas City premiere that takes our vision to heart. We aim to provide enlightening and empowering stage. People will learn of Paragraph 175 which became part of the Nazi code which allowed persecution for an inappropriate look or touch. The chorus comes in about a third the way in as victims during the Holocaust. It’s quite amazing. When I experienced the show, the audience didn’t know what to do at the end. There was this silence because it’s so heart-wrenching.”

The estimates of gays killed is somewhere around 15,000. “When people were released, it was considered a crime and people who were gay just didn’t talk about it,” Nadeau says. “As society becomes more diverse and accepting, the lesson we learn from history, as long as there is another group called they or them and whether those lines are divided because of the color of their skin, gender, religion, sexuality or more, whatever that definition is, we need to not repeat what the Germans did to the Jews, the gays and other minorities to dehumanize them. It’s not about them, but about us and that we must respect differences and honor our sameness.”

In conjunction with Falling in Love Again, HMC co-presents the art exhibit Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945, on loan from the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Admission is free and the exhibit will be open to the public runs through April 10. The display will be in the Dean’s Gallery, 800 E. 51st, at Miller Nichols Library on the University of Missouri-Kansas City. This exhibit is presented by The University of Missouri-Kansas City in partnership with The Kansas City Museum. The exhibition is sponsored by the UMKC Division of Diversity, Access and Equality, and the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America.

Nazi persecution of homosexuals focus of traveling exhibit at UMKC

Barbara Bayer | Kansas City Jewish Chronicle

Courtesy Schwules Museum, Berlin: ‘Solidarity.’ Richard Grune lithograph from a limited edition series ‘Passion des XX Jahrhunderts’ (Passion of the 20th Century). Grune was prosecuted under Paragraph 175 and from 1937 until liberation in 1945 was incarcerated in concentration camps. In 1947 he produced a series of etchings detailing what he witnessed in the camps. Grune died in 1983.

When the Holocaust comes to mind, many people Jewish and non-Jewish alike, often forget that the Jews were not the only people persecuted by the Nazis. The persecution of the homosexual community is the theme of a traveling exhibition from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, entitled “Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945” hosted by the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The free exhibition opened Feb. 16 and continues through April 10 in the Dean’s Gallery of the Miller Nichols Library.

The exhibition is being co-presented by the UMKC Division of Diversity, Access and Equity, in partnership with the Kansas City Museum and in conjunction with Heartland Men’s Chorus’ spring concert, “Falling in Love Again,” March 23-24 at the Folly Theater. It is also a project of GLAMA: the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America, a collecting partnership of the Kansas City Museum and the LaBudde Special Collections Department of the UMKC Libraries.

“Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933–1945” examines the Nazi regime’s attempt to eradicate homosexuality, which left thousands dead and shattered the lives of many more.

From 1933-1945, Germany’s National Socialist government attempted to root out those who did not fit its idealistic model of a “master Aryan race.” Jews were the primary victims and 6 million were murdered in the Holocaust. Millions of others were persecuted for racial and political reasons, including homosexuals. Visitors to this informational exhibition will learn about the Nazis’ attempt to wipe out homosexuality and terrorize German gay men into social conformity with arrests, convictions and incarcerations of tens of thousands of men in prisons and concentration camps.

Rick Fisher, the executive director of the Heartland Men’s Chorus, said the exhibit was brought to Kansas City as an educational resource for the community that ties into HMC’s upcoming concert “Falling in Love Again.” The program includes the Midwest premiere of the Jake Heggie opera “For a Look or a Touch,” which is based on the journal of Manfred Lewin that is housed at the USHMM.

“The journal tells the story of two gay lovers separated by the Holocaust as one was sent to the camps and exterminated. We see the exhibit as an opportunity for our community to learn about this often overlooked chapter of gay history in greater detail,” Fisher said.

Christopher Leitch, director of the Kansas City Museum at Corinthian Hall, said the museum became involved at the suggestion of HMC Artistic Director Dr. Joseph Nadeau.

“He had seen the exhibition and immediately saw the relevance in presenting it concurrently with the concert. He contacted GLAMA: the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America, which is a partnership of the UMKC Libraries and the Kansas City Museum. Stuart Hinds of UMKC and I had seen the exhibit at the USHMM in Washington and we agreed on the spot it would be good for our museum,” Leitch said.

UMKC’s Hinds, who is director of Special Collections, added that he thinks this exhibit tells a story unfamiliar to the majority of the university’s student population, and it provides an excellent opportunity for the library to enhance their educational experience in an unexpected and engaging manner.

“I serve as co-faculty adviser to Pride Alliance, our LGBTQ student association, and as a result I am privy to first-hand accounts of discrimination and intolerance they encounter, not only on campus but in the community as well. Members of the majority communities may have the impression that all is ‘hunky-dory’ for oppressed minority groups — gays are on TV, after all — but, as we know, this is not the case. Reminding visitors of how easily that oppression can expand and encompass entire populations is critical to its prevention in the future,” Hinds said.

Museum Director Leitch said it was important for the university and the museum specifically, to co-sponsor this exhibit because both are interested in important chapters of 20th-century history.

“We encourage all students and citizens to be better informed about the world, and the community, we all live in. And of course GLAMA is interested in the untold stories of marginalized LGBT persons across time and around the world. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a stellar reputation for scholarship and accuracy, and we all knew that working with them we would be presenting the best possible exhibit. There is a piercing honesty in all they do — bearing witness to such depraved truths is not easy, or comfortable. But if, as educators, we want to have a better world, where these things cannot be allowed to happen again, then we have to participate in exposing the deeds of the Nazis in all their horror and degradation,” Leitch said.

HMC’s Fisher hopes the exhibit gives those who see it a sense of history and reminds people to never forget the horrors of the past.

“Although great strides have been made toward LGBT acceptance and rights in Western countries, and are being made in the USA, there still is great persecution and atrocities being committed against our people around the world. We tell our stories and sing so that one day, we all may be free,” Fisher said.

The exhibition will be supplemented with special “brown bag” film viewings. “Bent,” the 1997 film adaptation of the Tony-award winning Broadway play about a gay couple imprisoned in a concentration camp, will be shown at noon March 6 in the Miller Nichols Library iX Theatre. The documentary film “Paragraph 175,” which shares the stories of individuals who were persecuted because of the law, will be shown in the same location at noon March 13. Brief discussions will be held after each film.

Visit kansascitymuseum.org/persecution for additional details and programming.

Exhibit filled with reminders of Nazis’ persecution of gays

Tim Engle | Kansas City Star

The gay scene in Berlin in the 1920s and early ’30s wasn’t as hidden as you might suppose. More than 100 nightclubs catered to gay men and women, including the Eldorado, which sported a banner above its entrance declaring (in German) “It’s OK here!”

Berlin and other major German cities boasted “recognized and recognizable” gay communities, says Stuart Hinds, UMKC Libraries’ director of special collections. During Germany’s Weimar Era of 1919 to 1933, Berlin’s estimated 350,000 gay citizens (among a population of 4 million) found a remarkable degree of acceptance.

But then came the Nazis and their vision of a “master Aryan race,” standards that did not include people whose behavior they considered aberrant.

Throughout the Nazis’ 12-year campaign of terror, starting in 1933, Jews had the biggest targets on their backs and suffered in the greatest numbers. By the end of World War II, an estimated 6 million had perished in the Holocaust.

But, as a traveling exhibit from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington makes clear, the Nazis had plenty of hate to go around: Besides Jews, German chancellor Adolf Hitler wanted to rid the world of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, Poles, the party’s political enemies and Germans with mental and physical disabilities.

And gay men. Sixty years before the Nazis took power, Germany already had an antigay law on the books. Known as Paragraph 175, it criminalized “indecencies between men,” punishable by imprisonment.

“Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945” is now on view at UMKC’s Miller Nichols Library, hugging an expanse of white wall in a hallway accessible to everyone, students in particular. The exhibit (which has been in KC once before) is not, in other words, tucked away in a dark gallery somewhere.

This is not a collection of rare artifacts. The display is made up of about 30 panels filled with text and images, such as the 1925 portrait of two well-dressed men titled “Freundespaar” (Couple) or a 1937 photograph of two men and a woman that turns out to represent two couples: the men (longtime partners) … and the in-the-know woman who married one of them so he could pass as straight.

Other images include Nazi propaganda posters, concentration camp records, newspaper and magazine articles.

“Our interest was in getting (the exhibit) in front of the students,” says Hinds at UMKC. “Because young people, this is completely new to them, in large part.” As well as plenty of adults in general.

The Heartland Men’s Chorus and the Kansas CityMuseum also had a hand in bringing the exhibit here. Karen Dace, UMKC’s deputy chancellor for diversity, access and equity, serves on the chorus’s board as well.

The exhibit, Dace says, offers “a great opportunity for us to talk about the Holocaust, to talk about LGBT persecution and to do it in a way that is educational and culturally significant.”

The spring concert of the gay men’s chorus March 23-24, “Falling in Love Again,” will examine through music “the halcyon days” of gay life in prewar Berlin and the subsequent persecution of gays during the Holocaust.

One point the exhibit makes is that the Nazis didn’t intend to exterminate all homosexuals. Instead, they wanted to change gay behavior through forced “re-education” or, failing that, isolation from the rest of society.

And what evidence did German police require to collar someone as a suspected homosexual? It didn’t take much. A wayward glance could do it.

Over the dozen years the Nazis were in power, German police arrested more than 100,000 men for violating Paragraph 175, according to the exhibit. Of those, about half were sent to prison. An unknown number went to mental institutions.

“Fragmentary records” suggest that between 5,000 and 15,000 gay men ended up in concentration camps, where, like Jews and others, many died from starvation, disease, beatings and murder. Gays in particular suffered vicious physical abuse from SS camp guards. They were also assigned the worst jobs.

Some gay camp prisoners, perhaps hundreds, were castrated to suppress their “degenerate” sex drive. Medical experiments were conducted on others.

In the camps, homosexuals were marked by the pink triangle patches on their prison uniforms. Gay men found themselves on the lowest rung of the camp caste systems, shunned by other prisoners, Hinds notes.

Even in 1945, when hundreds of thousands of concentration camp prisoners were liberated by Allied troops, some gay survivors were re-incarcerated because they hadn’t completed their sentences for violating Paragraph 175, which would remain law in West Germany until 1969. And gays would not be offered reparation payments like other victims of the Nazis.

One of the key lessons from the exhibit is how quickly a vibrant community can be wiped out, Hinds says.

“If you’re not vigilant,” he says, “it’s very easy for something like this to happen again.”

KC Magazine 100 List

Kimerly Winter Stern and Katie Van Luchene | KC Magazine

A Heartland Men’s Chorus performance is not to be missed, period. The talent, passion and theatrics of this beloved KC choral group are divine, thanks in large part to artistic director Nadeau, who has led the men since 1998. Watching Nadeau conduct the chorus—whether it’s a romantic, campy or Broadway number—is akin to soaking in a ballet dancer’s well-rehearsed leaps and turns. He consistently takes us on a delightful roller coaster that quite often sounds like a male choir in a musical heaven.