Rich joined the HMC Board of Directors in July 2020.

HMC has been in my blood since 2003. I joined as a singing member and found the best friends of my life. I was certainly young and had just come out as gay and was certainly in a low place. HMC became my family and I’m so very thankful to be a part of the board and help shape the future of this amazing organization.

What song makes you happy? 

All of the songs from naked man or from the charts “Rise Up” by Andra Day

What are you looking forward to the most after the pandemic? 

Seeing people I haven’t seen in over a year and TRAVEL!!

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.

HMC Presents Falling In Love Again

Heartland Men’s Chorus takes on the ambitious task of examining two radically different periods in German history through song. The 130-voice gay men’s chorus will present Falling in Love Again March 23 and 24, 2013 at the Folly Theater. The concert provides a fascinating glimpse into a period of history often ignored: the halcyon days of gay life in pre-war Berlin, and the subsequent persecution of gays during the Holocaust.

In 1920s Berlin, gay culture flourished: hundreds of cabarets offered a bawdy, excessive and vibrant nightlife. But the next decade would bring unspeakable horrors: gays sent to their death for an inappropriate look or touch.

Using music of the period (“Mack the Knife,” “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön,” “Love for Sale”) and songs from Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, HMC seeks to capture the raucous and outrageous gay culture of pre-war Berlin in the first act of the concert.

Eric Lane Barnes, assistant artistic director of Seattle Men’s Chorus, was given the difficult task of researching, selecting, and arranging the pieces for the concert’s first half. “I loved creating the atmosphere of this half,” he said. “The whole Weimar period is so culturally, artistically, philosophically and theatrically rich. There is so much documentation of the period; it’s been so fascinating and rewarding to learn about it.”

A particularly astonishing find was Lane Barnes’ discovery of a song written in 1920 and entitled, “Das Lila Lied,” or “The Lavender Song,” one of the first known gay liberation songs. German cabaret singer Ute Lemper recently released her own version, calling out the bigotry of those who “make our lives hell here on Earth/poisoning us with guilt and shame.” With a chorus that begins, “We’re not afraid to be queer and different,” the song delivered a bold statement in its day, even for Weimar-eraBerlin. Nonetheless, several surviving recordings by major band leaders suggest that it was a popular cabaret act.

Act II features the Midwest premiere of Jake Heggie’s For a Look or a Touch, a stirring dramatic 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. Originally commissioned by Seattle non-profit Music of Remembrance, and featuring a libretto by Gene Scheer, the one-act opera is based on stories from the documentary film Paragraph 175, and the journal of Manfred Lewin from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

The piece features two major characters. The first is the ghost of Manfred Lewin, murdered by the Nazis in 1942. The role was sung during the work’s premiere by operatic baritone Morgan Smith who will reprise his role in the HMC production. Actor Kip Niven plays Gad Beck, Manfred’s lover, who managed to survive the War and is now elderly. One night Manfred visits Gad to help him remember their love and time together; they share memories, and relate what happened to each of them in the camps. In the end, Gad not only remembers, but embraces those memories.

In addition to guest artists Smith and Niven, dancer Stephen Plante will appear in the concert’s second act, performing choreography by William Whitener, artistic director of Kansas City Ballet.

In researching the program, HMC artistic director Dr. Joseph Nadeau discovered fascinating background material concerning the music of the period, the gay culture of pre-war Berlin, and the characters portrayed in For a Look or a Touch. The Chorus has created an online journal at http://hmcblog.org to enhance the concert experience for audience members.

One of HMC’s most ambitious concerts to date, Falling in Love Again has allowed the Chorus to collaborate with partners across the Kansas City’s cultural and academic communities.

In partnership with The University of Missouri-Kansas City and The Kansas City Museum, the Chorus will co-present the exhibition Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945, on loan from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Through reproductions of some 250 historic photographs and documents, the exhibition examines the rationale, means, and impact of the Nazi regime’s attempt to eradicate homosexuality that left thousands dead and shattered the lives of many more.

Admission is free and the exhibition will be open to the public from February 16 through April 10 at the Dean’s Gallery of Miller Nichols Library, University of Missouri-Kansas City (800 E 51st, Kansas City, Mo.). The library is open Sunday, 1-11 p.m.; Monday-Thursday, 7:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Friday, 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m.; and Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Metered parking at UMKC is available Monday – Friday in the lot directly North of Miller Nichols Library at Rockhill Road and 51st Street. Parking is open and free on Saturdays and Sundays. The exhibit is sponsored by the UMKC Division of Diversity, Access and Equality, and the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America.

Additional events, including screenings of the films Paragraph 175 and Bent, will take place throughout the spring. Complete details are available at http://www.kansascitymuseum.org/persecution

Heartland Men’s Chorus presents Falling in Love Again, Saturday March 23, 2013 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, March 24, 2013, at 4:00 p.m. at the Folly Theater (300 West 12th Street, Kansas City, Mo.). Tickets from $15 – $35 are available at https://hmckc.org or by calling (816) 931-3338.