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The pink triangle, now a gay pride and gay rights symbol, was originally used to denote homosexual men as a Nazi concentration camp badge.

A chart containing various badges for identifying prisoners

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 black triangle as a symbol of lesbian or feminist solidarity, a counterpart to the gay pink triangle, probably originated from the Nazi "asocial" 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.

The prisoners with a pink triangle identified themselves as gay (sometimes they were married to women, and engaged in very few, if any, homosexual acts). 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).

While the number of homosexuals in 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." ^[1]

Pink triangle prisoner Erwin Schimitzek, interned in Auschwitz in 1941, died in 1942.

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-instated Federal Republic of Germany. An openly gay man named Heinz Dörmer, for instance, served 20 years in total both 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 offense 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 released 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.

The pink triangle is the basis of the design of the Homomonument in Amsterdam.

• The group Weezer has a song called "Pink Triangle".
• In an example of 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.
• In an episode of The Simpsons entitled "Jaws Wired Shut", Maggie is pictured holding a balloon in the shape of an inverted pink triangle during the gay pride parade.
• During the creation scene of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dr. Frank-N-Furter wears a Pink Triangle.
• In San Francisco, since about 1999, a large pink triangle has been painted on the slope of Twin Peaks above Market Street (the street on which the Gay Pride Parade takes place) each year the week before Gay Pride weekend.

• History of gays in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
• Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures
• "Bent" (play)
• Nazi concentration camp badges
• Homomonument

1. ^ The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (1986) by Richard Plant (New Republic Books). ISBN 0-8050-0600-1.

• 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.

• A short explanation of the origin of pink and other queer triangles
• Auschwitz Concentration Camp: The Pink-Triangle prisoners

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