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From now until December, Memorial Library will be hosting a traveling exhibit designed to reveal the persecution of homosexuals by the Nazis.

Cindy Crane, executive director of the Madison Gay Straight Alliance for Safe Schools, said the event is intended to inform the community of a lesser-known aspect of the Holocaust.

“Knowledge of history is the first step towards understanding,” said Crane.

Coupled with Nazi history, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s exhibit includes three panels devoted to the history of Wisconsin’s LGBT community and the state’s gay liberation movement.

“From Hate to Hope” encompasses not only the exhibit at Memorial Library and the panels but also a lecture series, film series and book exhibition chronicling the history and ideology behind the Nazi persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust.

The two-month campus event features speakers such as U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, who will be speaking Saturday with State Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, as well as original music and performances by Proud Theater, a Madison-based youth theater group which focuses on LGBT issues.

The program is designed to inform middle and high school students throughout Wisconsin about how their actions can directly impact members of the LGBT community.

Teenagers from around the state will be bused to Madison for the exhibit and the various events.

Crane teamed up with John Tortorice, director of the George L. Mosse Program, and Lee Konrad, director of Memorial Library, to find the appropriate venue to display the exhibit.

“This is a great example of what the community and the university can produce when they come together,” Tortorice said of the exhibit.

Not only does the exhibit document history, but it is also designed to provoke thought and stimulate an open discussion in the community on past and current LGBT issues.

“I want students who come to this exhibit to walk away seeing how narrow-minded thought can be manipulated and used as a tool by larger entities,” Tortorice said. “Obviously, this is an extreme example, but it demonstrates what can happen as a result of prejudice.”

Several students have already had a chance to stop by the exhibit displayed in Memorial Library’s entranceway.

UW junior Andy Schmidt said he thought the exhibit was “shocking.”

“I knew the Nazi regime was evil, but I did not know the extent to which they persecuted minorities,” Schmidt said.

UW German professor Jim Steakley is headlining an panel of scholars scheduled to speak throughout the course of the event. Lecture topics vary from individual biographies of the victims to the culture of pre-Nazi Germany which led up to the Holocaust.

The exhibit’s juxtaposition of the past and present serves to highlight how far the LGBT community has come in gaining community acceptance as well as offering hope for gaining greater tolerance in the future.

The exhibition is free and open to the public and sponsored by Gay Straight Advocates for Leanring (GSAFE)E in collaboration with the UW General Library System and the George L. Mosse Fund for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History.