SIMON WIESENTHAL was born on this date in the small Ukrainian town of Buczacz. Trained as an architectural engineer, Wiesenthal survived the Nazi concentration camps losing over eighty members of his extended family and dedicated the rest of his life to seeking justice for all those who died by bringing Nazi war criminals to justice. He was later celebrated as a "Nazi-hunter" and portrayed by Laurence Olivier in "The Boys from Brazil," but for many years, as Cold War governments had forgotten about Nazi atrocities,

Wiesenthal was a veritable prophet in the wilderness, tirelessly working in the memory of all those who had died.  He wrote a number of bestselling books including "Murders Among Us," "Justice, Not Vengeance," and "The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness." Through his efforts countless Nazi criminals stood trial.  Without Wiesenthal's activity and vision, there would not have been war crimes hearings about Rwanda, Bosnia, or a permanent War Crimes tribunal in the Hague.

For the sake of this Gay Wisdom listserve, we would point out that Wiesenthal spoke for all those who had lost their lives and was an early outspoken activist for the thousands of homosexuals who died in the holocaust, pointing out that they had all been buried together in mass graves and should all be acknowledged. Wiesenthal died of natural causes in 2005 at the age 96.

Recent events remind us that we are still not out of the woods with respect to facsist politics and that we must all remain as vigilant as Wiesenthal.

JENNIFER HIGDON, an American composer and musician, was born on this date. She has received many awards including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto and the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Percussion Concerto. Higdon was born in Brooklyn, but spent her first 10 years in Atlanta, Georgia, before moving to Tennessee. A largely self-taught flautist, she played in her high school's concert band and heard little classical music before her college years. She studied at Bowling Green and majored in flute performance. 

Higdon teaches composition at the Curtis Institute where she holds the Milton L. Rock Chair in Compositional Studies. She has served as Composer-in-Residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Fort Worth Symphony. Her musical style uses elements of traditional tonality and emphasizes interesting color combinations.

Higdon has received commissions from major symphonies including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the National Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, and the Dallas Symphony. blue cathedral, a one-movement tone poem dealing with the death of her brother from cancer, has quickly became one of the most performed modern orchestral works by a living American composer. It has been performed by more than 400 orchestras since its premiere in 2000. Her works have been recorded on more than four dozen CDs.

Higdon ihas written an opera based on Charles Frazier's 1997 novel, Cold Mountain. It was co-commissioned by The Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia and was premiered in Santa Fe in 2015. The libretto is written by Gene Scheer. It is Higdon's first opera. She is the most frequently performed living female composer according to the League of American Composers.

Higdon lives with her partner Cheryl Lawson in Philadelphia. They met in high school.

COMMODUS, Roman emperor, dies (b: 161); It’s New Year’s Eve and, after a long year’s journey, we are finally at the end of this year. To be on the safe side, why not stay home and watch old reruns of Guy Lombardo and spend a quiet evening in memory of the emperor Commodus, who called his exceptionally well-endowed cup-bearer “my donkey,” and was strangled by an over-enthusiastic wrestler named Narcissus on this day. 

In 2000's Gladiator, Commodus was portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in an Academy-Award-nominated performance. The historical character of Commodus is fictionalized in the movie as a deranged megalomaniac who murders Marcus Aurelius to usurp the throne. (There is no historical evidence suggesting Marcus Aurelius was murdered, much less by his own son.)

However the movie removes some of the most bizarre eccentricities of Commodus. The film's protagonist, Maximus Decimus Meridius (played by Russell Crowe) is loosely inspired by Narcissus, and was named so in a previous draft of the screenplay, but as in The Fall of the Roman Empire Commodus is killed in hand-to-hand combat. Commodus's death marked the end of the Nervan-Antonian and of the Pax Romana. 

HENRY GERBER was among the earliest Gay Rights activists in America died on this date (b: 1892). He founded the nation’s first Gay organization and Gay publication. Born Joseph Henry Dittmer in Bavaria, Germany, Gerber moved to Chicago in 1913. From 1920 to 1923,  he served in the U.S. Army during the occupation of Germany.

While in Germany, he was exposed to the homosexual emancipation movement. Gerber subscribed to Gay publications and was inspired by Magnus Hirschfeld, founder of a German homosexual and science advocacy organization. After returning to Chicago, Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights, which advocated for gays and lesbians. He published the organization’s newsletter, “Friends and Freedom.” Gerber limited membership in the Society for Human Rights to Gay men. Unknown to him, the vice president, Al Weininger, was married with children.

In 1925, Weininger’s wife reported the organization’s activities and it was shut down for moral turpitude. The Chicago police arrested Gerber and tried him three times. Although Gerber was found not guilty, the legal fees cost him his life savings and his job.

Gerber moved to New York City and reenlisted in the Army, where he served for 18 years. He led a correspondence club called Connections, which became a national network for gay men. Under a pen name, he wrote articles for various publications, arguing the case for gay rights. At 80, Gerber died in the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home in Washington, D.C. In 1992, he was inducted posthumously into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. In 2001, the Henry Gerber House was designated a Chicago landmark.

LAMBDA RISING, an LGBT bookstore that opened in 1974 in Washington D.C. closed its doors. Founded by Deacon Maccubbin in 1974 with 250 titles, it was known for its wide selection of books, ranging from queer theory and religion to erotica, as well as DVDs, music CDs and gifts.

The bookstore was originally located in 300 square feet at 1724 20th Street NW. It moved to a 900-square-foot retail space at 2001 S Street NW in 1979 and, in 1984, moved to a 4,800-square-foot space at 1625 Connecticut Avenue in Dupont Circle, one of Washington's popular gay and lesbian neighborhoods.

A second store in Baltimore, MD believed to be the only gay bookstore in Maryland, opened in 1984 and closed in the spring of 2008. Director John Waters declared that store's closing "very, very sad". Waters, a long-time customer, said the Baltimore shop was "a seriously good bookshop, with the added touch of porno. ... I always went in there to find books that I didn't know about and couldn't find anywhere else." A third store in Rehobeth Beach, Delawareopened in 1991 and closed in December 2009. A fourth store in Norfolk, VA, opened in 1996 and closed in June 2007.

In February 1975, Lambda Rising ran the world's first gay-oriented television commercial. It aired on WRC (owned by NBC) and WTOP (the local CBS affiliate, now WUSA). Also in 1975, Lambda Rising organized Gay Pride Day, the forerunner to Capital Pride, Washington's first annual gay pride celebration, and continued to host the event for the next four years before turning it over to a non-profit organization.

To support LGBT literature, Lambda Rising created the Lambda Book Report in 1987 and the annual Lambda Literary Award, also known as "the Lammys," in 1989. In 1996, Lambda Rising turned those projects over to the new non-profit Lambda Literary Foundation.

In February 2003, Lambda Rising bought the Oscar Wilde Bookshop, the country's first gay and lesbian bookstore, to save it from closing. The store was founded by Craig Rodwell in 1967 at 15 Mercer Street in Greenwich Village, later moving to the corner of Christopher and Gay Streets in Manhattan. After working with the New York staff staff for three years and getting the store on solid financial footing, Lambda Rising sold the store to the long-time manager in order to return the store to local control. In December 2009, Maccubbin announced that Lambda Rising's two stores would close by January 2010.

In his statement, Maccubbin said, "The phrase 'mission accomplished' has gotten a bad rap in recent years, but in this case, it certainly applies…"When we set out to establish Lambda Rising in 1974, it was intended as a demonstration of the demand for gay and lesbian literature. We thought... we could encourage the writing and publishing of LGBT books, and sooner or later other bookstores would put those books on their own shelves and there would be less need for a specifically gay and lesbian bookstore. Today, thirty-five years later, nearly every general bookstore carries LGBT books."

The store closed its doors on December 31, 2010.

Hogmanay in Scotland; The roots of Hogmanay reach back to the celebration of the winter solstice among the Norse, as well as incorporating customs from the Gaelic New Year's celebration of Samhain. In Europe, winter solstice evolved into the ancient celebration of Saturnalia, a great Roman winter festival, where people celebrated completely free of restraint and inhibition. The Vikings celebrated Yule, which later contributed to the Twelve Days of Christmas, or the "Daft Days" (really) as they were sometimes called in Scotland. The winter festival went underground with the Protestant Reformation and ensuing years, but re-emerged near the end of the 17^th century.