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A new musical spotlights the Nazi persecution of LGBTQ+ people
(New York Jewish Week) — Some 50,000 gay men and women were imprisoned by Nazis during the Holocaust. Of them, approximately 10,000 to 15,000 were held in concentration camps, and nearly all of those who were sent to the camps died there.
And yet, many stories of LGBTQ+ people who died in Nazi prisons are left untold. The numbers, while huge, shrink in comparison to the millions of Jewish people who died and were tortured at the hands of the Nazis.
This dynamic is why writer, director and actor Alan Palmer first learned about Nazi persecution of homosexuals completely by chance. In August 2016, Palmer — who is best known for his off-Broadway show “Fabulous Divas of Broadway” and his role on the “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” — was performing at Edinburgh Fringe Festival when he stumbled upon an article about the specific targeting of gay men and women under Hitler. He found himself falling into a world of ever-deepening research, consumed by the idea that there were so many lost stories of LGBTQ+ people who died in concentration camps.
Inspired, Palmer decided to travel to Germany. There, he visited some concentration camps and saw pictures of the gay men who were imprisoned there. “I found these beautiful photos of these people who were Jewish and trans” and gay], Palmer said. “Being a writer of musicals by trade, the pictures started me on a journey of writing this new piece.”
This “new piece” is Palmer’s one-man play, “Chanteuse: A Survival Musical,” which he’s currently performing at Here Arts Center (145 Sixth Ave.). The play relates the story of Werner, a gay man in 1930s Berlin who assumes the identity of his landlady, a German woman who had died unexpectedly, in order to avoid persecution and imprisonment. A performer by trade, Werner reinvents himself as a chanteuse and begins singing for his supper, and survival, in the clubs of Berlin. “It’s fictional, in a way, because there’s no [single] person who had this experience,” Palmer told the New York Jewish Week. “However, each one of the pieces [in the play] is true.”
The play explores the precarity of survival and how intersecting identities complicate ideas about oppression and freedom. “There are heart-wrenching stories of Jewish families whose relatives were killed during these times. And some of those people were gay — but you don’t hear about them much,” Palmer said. “The reason is families didn’t talk about it back then. If Uncle So-and-so was sent away [before the round-ups of Jews intensified], no one talked about why. So all of these records of people who existed are just gone.”
Palmer plays Werner, a gay man in 1930s Berlin who assumes the identity of his landlady to escape Nazi persecution. (Russ Rowland)
Despite being raised in a Mormon community in Salt Lake City, Palmer said he’s long felt a kinship with Jews. “As soon as I left [home] I began to make lifelong friendships with Jewish people, mostly because of theater. You can’t have theater without Jewish people or gay people!” he said. “When I see the rise of antisemitism today I just think: ‘For gosh sakes, how can people keep attacking this group of people?’”
As “Chanteuse” unfolds, Werner, like so many gay men during that time, isn’t able to escape the long arm of the Nazi regime for long. He is eventually outed and imprisoned in a concentration camp, where he both experiences and witnesses brutal violence and dehumanization. “Even though the Jewish people are in another camp on the other side of the wall, there are still a small number of gay Jews on this side. On Friday evenings, the gay Jewish men pray,” he relates, in a touching monologue toward the end of the scene.
“Chanteuse,” written and performed by Palmer and directed by Dorothy Danner, is about memorializing those whose stories were lost. Throughout the play, Werner relates stories of LGBTQ+ prisoners as well as Romani people, people with mental and physical disabilities, and, of course, Jewish people he meets throughout his calamitous journey. It is also, however, about creating connections to the rise in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and antisemitism in the current age.
To that end, Palmer curated a mini pop-up museum, displayed in the atrium outside the theater, that presents information about what happened to members of the LGBTQ+ community in Europe during World War II. “I envisioned people engaging before the performance and having the information sink in during the play,” Palmer said. “But it’s interesting to see how many people walk past all of these panels, and after the show they went out to the museum and actually spent time reading and viewing the history.”
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, gay men were “often subjected to physical and sexual abuse by camp guards and fellow inmates,” and some were “beaten and publicly humiliated.” Some of these prisoners were also subject to inhumane medical experiments or forced castration, according to the USHMM. These “pink triangle prisoners,” named for the badge they were forced to wear in the camps, were arrested for breaking an existing German law that made same-sex relations illegal in the country.
The exhibit draws direct connections between the use of the legal system and false medical science by the Nazis and the current rise in vitriol directed towards the LGBTQ+ community in America and around the world. While our government isn’t conducting forced castrations of gay men and women like the Nazis did, given the veritable flood of anti-LGBTQ+ (and particularly anti-trans) laws being passed by state governments across the United States, Palmer believes we should be paying very close attention to these legislative moves before it’s too late.
“History cannot repeat itself,” Palmer said. “People are being silenced. They’re being forced to hide. I’ve never lived in a closet, I’ve always been myself. My truth was always out there. The idea that people like me are being told they can’t live their whole truth is frightening to me.”
But bringing historical documentation into the experience isn’t the only way in which “Chanteuse” is a multimedia project — it’s also musical, with a score written by award-winning composer and arranger David Legg. “The music serves almost as a spoonful of sugar: It helps the information go down easier,” Palmer said.
Stylistically, the score implements melodic and harmonic elements of both early-‘30s-era jazz and traditional European Jewish music. The instrumentation (piano, tenor saxophone, percussion and upright bass) was chosen by Legg in order to facilitate this evocative musical landscape. “We ended up putting an underscore through the entire piece,” Palmer said. “It created a continuity, so you never feel it’s disjointed — dialogue, song, dialogue, song — the audience is never shocked out of the world we’re creating.”
And yet, Palmer insists that his created world is very relevant to the one we’re living in today. While it may seem unimaginable for something as horrifying as the Holocaust to repeat itself, Palmer said he and his co-creators want to remind audiences of the current trends towards authoritarianism around the world as they watch Werner navigate the terror of being gay in 1930s Berlin.
“Around the United States, we’re seeing more and more bans of drag performance, of gay media,” Palmer said. “And I think drag, like any other art form, is a way of storytelling. It isn’t anything people should be afraid of.”
“This is a moment in which it’s important to say, ‘We all need to work together,’” he added. “You know, if every persecuted group stood strong together, we’d be surprised at how quickly things would turn around in a positive way.”
“Chanteuse” is being performed at Here Arts Center (145 Sixth Ave.) on Tuesdays through Saturdays through July 30. For tickets and additional info, click here. In order to allow broader access to the musical, 10 tickets priced at $10 are available for each performance on a first come, first served basis.
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The post A new musical spotlights the Nazi persecution of LGBTQ+ people appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
The post US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations
US President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
The Trump administration escalated its showdown against Harvard University on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre across southern Israel.
The US Department of Education (DOE) announced the action on Wednesday. Citing Harvard’s admitted failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated others forms of hatred in the past, the DOE called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
The DOE, McMahon added, “expects the New England Commission of Higher Education to enforce its policies and practices, and to keep the Department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism has acknowledged that the university administration’s handling of campus antisemitism fell well below its obligations under both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its own nondiscrimination policies.
In a 300-plus-page report, the task force compiled a comprehensive record of antisemitic incidents on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as murderers of people of color. The report identified Harvard’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups as a key source of its problem.
Coming several weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of $2.26 billion in federal research grants and contracts for Harvard, the task force report found it was “clear” that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias have been fomented, practiced, and tolerated not only at Harvard but also within academia more widely.”
The university is now suing the federal government over the funding halt.
President Trump has spoken scathingly of Harvard, calling it, for example, an “Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute … with students being accepted from all over the world that want to rip our Country apart” in an April post to his Truth Social platform.
In recent weeks, however, both Trump and McMahon had commended Harvard’s constructive response in negotiations over reforms the administration has asked it to implement as a precondition for restoring federal funds. The requested reforms include hiring more conservative faculty, shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] programs, and slashing the size of administrative offices tangential to the university’s central educational mission.
The administration has since changed its tone in the wake of a report by The Harvard Crimson that interim Harvard President Alan Garber has said “behind closed doors” that he has no intention of doing anything that would make Harvard more palatable to conservatives.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism issued Harvard a formal “notice of violation” of civil rights law. Charging that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a flood of racist and antisemitic abuse both in and outside of the classroom, it threatened to strip whatever remains of Harvard’s federal funding.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
In Wednesday’s announcement, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Harvard’s conduct “forfeits the legitimacy that accreditation is designed to uphold.”
“HHS and Department of Education will actively hold Harvard accountable through sustained oversight until it restores public trust and ensures a campus free of discrimination,” he said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks
IDF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
Israeli forces uncovered and destroyed Hezbollah weapons caches in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as a new report indicated that despite ongoing U.S.-led efforts to secure a disarmament deal, the Iran-backed group is making repeated, largely concealed attempts to rebuild its military presence in the area.
Troops carried out several operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon on Wednesday morning, destroying weapons depots, explosives and multibarrel launchers concealed in forested terrain, the IDF said, in violation of the November ceasefire, which requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces 20 miles from the Israeli border.
A new report released this week by the Alma Research and Education Center found that Hezbollah is focused on rebuilding in three areas: operational deployment, weapons acquisition, and financial recovery.
“Hezbollah didn’t give up its resistance narrative and motivation,” Alma’s director, Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, told The Algemeiner.
“It wants to rebuild its capabilities and infrastructures, whether it’s the villages that will be used as human shields or the military infrastructure in South Lebanon and in Lebanon in general.”
According to Zehavi, Hezbollah is attempting to return Radwan fighters to positions south of the Litani River as part of a wider plan to restore its elite forces to operational readiness. The IDF on Monday killed Radwan commander Ali Abd al-Hassan Haidar in a targeted strike. The action came hours after US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut to discuss a long-term deal that would include an Israeli withdrawal and complete disarmament of Hezbollah.
Barrack described the Lebanese response to the proposal as positive. Later, he issued a blunt warning to Hezbollah in response to a vow by the terror group’s leader, Naim Qassem, not to lay down its arms. “If they mess with us anywhere in the world, they will have a serious problem with us,” Barrack said in an interview with Lebanese news network LBCI. “They don’t want that.”
Zehavi said it was premature to predict the outcome of the diplomatic efforts. She warned that the challenge of disarming Hezbollah remains enormous and emphasized that the Lebanese Armed Forces have not demonstrated the capability or willingness to confront the group.
“It’s too soon to be optimistic or pessimistic,” she said, noting that no firm commitments have emerged from the Beirut talks.
Hezbollah’s efforts to smuggle and manufacture weapons have been complicated by both Israeli strikes and the regional realignment over recent months. While Israeli strikes have disrupted many supply routes, according to Zehavi, Syrian authorities have intercepted far more Hezbollah-bound weapons than the Lebanese Army, which claims to have uncovered 500 arms caches but has provided no evidence.
The financial front marks the third aspect of Hezbollah’s rebuilding effort. Last week, the group halted cash payments to Shiite civilians whose homes were damaged in the war, citing liquidity problems. Zehavi attributed the shortfall to disruptions in Iran’s funding networks — an outcome of the 12-day war against the regime in Tehran — and said the constraints would likely hamper Hezbollah’s ability to compensate its base and sustain operations.
“I hope they will continue to have problems with the cash flow, that way it will be very difficult for them to recover,” she said.
The post IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.