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Pink triangle

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For the Weezer song, see Pink Triangle (song).
The pink triangle, now turned upright as a gay pride and gay rights symbol, was originally used pointed downward on a Nazi concentration camp badge to denote homosexual men.
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File:German concentration camp chart of prisoner markings.jpg
A chart, circa 1938 - 1942, of prisoner markings used in German concentration camps. The 5th column from the left was for homosexuals.

The pink triangle (Template:Lang-de) 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 colour of which was to categorise him or her according "to his kind." Jews had to wear the yellow badge (in addition to any other badge representing other reasons for incarceration), and "anti-social individuals" the black triangle.

The inverted pink triangle, originally intended as a badge of shame, has become an international symbol of gay pride and the gay rights movement, and is second in popularity only to the rainbow flag.[1]

Use in concentration camps

While the number of homosexuals in German concentration camps is hard to estimate, Richard Plant gives a rough estimate of the number of men convicted for homosexuality "between 1933 to 1944 at between 50,000 and 63,000."[2]

After the camps were liberated at the end of the Second World War, many of the pink triangle prisoners were often simply re-imprisoned by the Allied-established Federal Republic of Germany. An openly gay man named Heinz Dörmer, for instance, served 20 years total, first in a Nazi concentration camp and then in the jails of the new Republic. In fact, the Nazi amendments to Paragraph 175, which turned homosexuality from a minor offence into a felony, remained intact after the war for a further 24 years. While suits seeking monetary compensation have failed, in 2002 the German government issued an official apology to the gay community.

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.

Gay rights symbol

By the end of the 1970s, the pink triangle was adopted as a symbol for gay rights protest.[3] Some academics have linked the reclamation of the symbol with the publication, in the early 1970s, of concentration camp survivor Heinz Heger's memoir, Men with the pink triangle.[4]

The pink triangle is the basis of the design of the Homomonument in Amsterdam, the Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial in Sydney, the Pink Triangle Park in the Castro neighbourhood of San Francisco and the huge one-acre Pink Triangle on Twin Peaks that is displayed every year during San Francisco Pride weekend in San Francisco.

Reclaiming a previously offensive term, the gay areas of both Newcastle upon Tyne, England and Edinburgh, Scotland are colloquially known as the Pink Triangles on account of their approximate shapes.[citation needed]

Contrast with Lesbian black triangle

Lesbians were targeted as "anti-social" in the Nazi regime because of their refusal to marry and breed under the laws of the Third Reich, thus placing them in the category of the black triangle, which was a heterogeneous group that included vagrants, "work shy" individuals, prostitutes, thieves and those who broke the law prohibiting sex between an Aryan and a Jew. Lesbians were persecuted for their sexuality under the black triangle, simply not in the same way as homosexual men were.[5]

In the 1983 Mel Brooks film To Be or Not to Be, the character of Sasha is forced to wear a pink triangle by the Nazis, but later makes light of it, proclaiming "Don't wait up. I've got a late date, with another triangle".

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "San Francisco Neighborhoods: The Castro" KQED documentary.
  2. ^ Plant, Richard (1988), The pink triangle: the Nazi war against homosexuals (revised ed.), H. Holt, p. 175, ISBN 9780805006001
  3. ^ "Youth says he was raped by police after arrest". The Times. 1981-08-21. p. 3. I was obviously picked on because of my appearance and the fact that I was wearing a Gay Lib supporters badge, a pink triangle.
  4. ^ Jensen, Erik (2002). "The pink triangle and political consciousness: gays, lesbians, and the memory of Nazi persecution". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 11 (1 and 2).
  5. ^ Elmam, R. Amy (1996). "Triangles and Tribulations: The Politics of Nazi Symbols". Journal of Homosexuality. 30 (3).

Further reading

  • An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (1999) by Gad Beck (University of Wisconsin Press). ISBN 0-299-16500-0.
  • Liberation Was for Others: Memoirs of a Gay Survivor of the Nazi Holocaust (1997) by Pierre Seel (Perseus Book Group). ISBN 0-306-80756-4.
  • I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror (1995) by Pierre Seel. ISBN 0-465-04500-6.
  • Heinz Heger (1994). Men With the Pink Triangle: The True, Life-And-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps. Alyson Books. ISBN 1555830064.
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