Pink triangle

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Image:Pink triangle.svg The pink triangle (German: Rosa Winkel) was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used by the Nazis to identify male prisoners in concentration camps who were sent there because of their homosexuality. Every prisoner had to wear a triangle on his or her jacket, the color of which was to categorize him or her according "to his kind." Jews had to wear the yellow badge, and "anti-social individuals" (which included vagrants, "work shy" individuals and often, but not exclusively, lesbians), the black triangle.

The inverted pink triangle has become an international symbol of gay pride and the gay rights movement, and is second in popularity only to the rainbow flag.

1 History
2 See also
3 Further reading
4 External links

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History

Not all of the prisoners with a pink triangle identified themselves as gay (sometimes they were married to women, and had had homosexual sex only a few times). Not everyone convicted under Paragraph 175 was sent to a concentration camp; in fact, most were sent to ordinary jails. Most gay men who suffered and died in Nazi concentration camps actually wore the yellow star (because they were both Gay and Jewish). As such, it is difficult to construct a coherent gay victim group and count its numbers.

Image:Schimitzek Erwin.jpg

Those imprisoned and made to wear the pink triangle also have never been recompensated by the German government. If they continued to be openly gay they could be reimprisoned again and again, as was Heinz Doermer, who served 20 years in total both in a Nazi concentration camp and in the jails of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Nazi amendments to Paragraph 175, which turned homosexuality from a minor offense into a felony, remained intact after the war for a further 24 years.

Today, fewer than ten of those imprisoned for homosexuality are known to be still living. In 2000, the documentary film Paragraph 175 recorded some of their testimonies.

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