Pink triangle

A pink triangle in its traditional orientation.

The pink triangle has been a symbol for various LGBTQ identities: initially intended as a badge of shame, it was later reclaimed as a positive symbol of self-identity. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, it began as one of the insignia of the Nazi concentration camp, distinguishing those incarcerated because authorities had identified them as gay men, a category that also included bisexual men and women. transgender. In the 1970s, it reemerged as a symbol of protest against homophobia and gay activism, and has since been embraced by the LGBTQ community as a popular symbol of pride and the LGBTQ rights movement.

History

Prisoner classification scheme in concentration camps

Nazi identification of prisoners

In Nazi concentration and death camps, each prisoner was required to wear a downward-pointing triangular cloth badge on his chest, the color of which identified the reason for his imprisonment. Initially, male homosexual prisoners were identified with a green triangle (indicating criminals) or a red triangle (political prisoners), the number 175 (referring to article 175, the section of the German penal code that criminalizes homosexual activity), or the letter A (standing for Arschficker, literally "anal fucker").

Later, the use of a pink triangle was established for prisoners identified as gay men, which also included bisexual men and transgender women (lesbian and bisexual women and trans men were not systematically incarcerated; some were). they went and were classified as "asocial", with a black triangle). The pink triangle was also assigned to sex offenders, such as rapists and pedophiles. If a prisoner was also identified as Jewish, the triangle it was superimposed on a second, opposite-pointing yellow triangle, to resemble the Star of David as the yellow insignia identifying other Jews. Prisoners wearing a pink triangle were treated harshly, even by other prisoners, particularly the kapos.

While the number of pink triangle prisoners in Nazi concentration camps is difficult to estimate, Richard Plant, author of The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals, gives a rough estimate. of the number of those convicted of homosexuality "between 1933 and 1944 from 50,000 to 63,000".

After World War II

After the camps were liberated at the end of World War II, many of the prisoners imprisoned for homosexuality were reincarcerated by the Allied-established Federal Republic of Germany. An openly gay man named Heinz Dörmer, for example, he served in a Nazi concentration camp and later in the prisons of the new Republic. The Nazi amendments to Article 175, which made homosexuality from a misdemeanor to a felony, remained intact in East Germany until 1968 and in West Germany until 1969. The FRG continued to imprison those identified as homosexual until 1994 under a version revised version of the article, which still made sexual relations between men up to the age of 21, as well as male homosexual prostitution, illegal. Although claims for monetary compensation have failed, in 2002 the German government issued an official apology to the LGBTQ community.

In the year 2000, fewer than ten living prisoners were known to have worn a pink triangle. Rudolf Brazda, one of the last known gay concentration camp survivors, died on August 3, 2011 at the age of 98.

In 2000, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman filmed the documentary Paragraph 175 in which they ensured that the testimony of some of the prisoners would remain for posterity.

Symbol of gay rights

A member of ACT UP shows the organization's protest sign with a pink triangle reversed up and the phrase "Silence = Death".

In the 1970s, newly active European and North American gay liberation activists began using the pink triangle to raise awareness of its use in Nazi Germany. In 1972, Heinz Heger wrote The Men of the Pink Triangle, the memoirs of Josef Kohout, a concentration camp survivor, which drew increased public attention. In response, the German group gay liberation Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin called in 1973 for gay men to use it as a memorial to past victims and protest continued discrimination.

In the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the bisexual and transvestite character Dr. Frank N. Furter wears a pink triangular badge on one of his outfits. In 1976, Peter Recht, Detlef Stoffel and Christiane Schmerl made the German documentary Rosa Winkel? Das ist doch schon lange vorbei... (Pink triangle? That was a long time ago...). Publications such as San Francisco's Gay Sunshine and Toronto's The Body Politic promoted the pink triangle as a memorial to those who had been persecuted.

In the 1980s, the pink triangle was increasingly used not only as a souvenir but also as a positive symbol of self and community identity. It commonly represented gay and lesbian identity, and was incorporated into the logos of such organizations and companies. It was also used by individuals, sometimes discreetly or ambiguously, as an "internal" unknown to the general public. The logo for the 1987 Lesbian and Gay Rights March on Washington was a silhouette of the United States Capitol Dome superimposed on a pink triangle.

Taking a more militant tone, ACT UP (AIDS Coalition for the Liberation of Power) was formed by six gay activists in New York City in 1987 to call attention to the disproportionate impact of the disease on gay and bisexual men, and the apparent "genocidal" of homophobia in slowing progress in medical research, he adopted a pink triangle pointing up on a black field along with the slogan "SILENCE = DEATH" as their logo. Some use the triangle in this orientation as an "inversion" specific to its use by the Nazis. The Pink Panthers in Denver, Colorado adopted a pink triangle stamped with the clawed panther logo, adapted from the original Pink Panther Patrol in New York City.

Pancarta in the form of pink triangle with fist in front of the Cibeles Palace, during the manifestation of the Critical Pride 2018 of Madrid.

In the 1990s, a pink triangle enclosed in a green circle was commonly used as a symbol identifying "safe spaces" for LGBTQ people at work or school.

The pink triangle served as the basis for the "biangles," a symbol of bisexual identity consisting of pink and blue triangles superimposed on an area of lavender or purple. Pink and blue symbolize homosexuality and heterosexuality, or the female and male gender, reflecting the attraction of bisexuals to both.

Monuments and memorials

The pink triangle symbol has been included on numerous public monuments and memorials. In 1995, after a decade of campaigning for it, a pink triangle plaque was installed at the Dachau Memorial Museum to commemorate the suffering of gays and lesbians. In 2015, a pink triangle was added to Chicago's Legacy Walk It is also the basis for the design of the Homomonument in Amsterdam and the Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial in Sydney. In San Francisco, it inspired both the Pink Triangle Park in the Castro and the Pink Triangle in Twin Peaks displayed every year during Pride weekend. It is also the base for LGBTQ monuments in Barcelona and Montevideo, the Sculpture al homosexual collective of Sitges and the funerary component of the Pink Dolphin LGBTQ Monument in Galveston.

Until 1985 there was an unofficial ban on placing pink triangle wreaths on the UK's war memorial, the Cenotaph, with such wreaths being removed as soon as they were found by officials.

• Examples of memorials that use the pink triangle
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  Pink triangleRosa Winkel in German) memorial for homosexual men killed in Buchenwald.

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  At the Nollendorfplatz metro station in Berlin, a pink triangular plate honors homosexual victims.

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  The Homomonument Amsterdam uses pink triangles symbolically to commemorate homosexual men killed in the Holocaust (and also the victims of anti-gay violence in general).

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  Monument in memory of the holocaust of gais and lesbians (Sydney)

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  Parque del Triángulo Rosa in the Castro District of San Francisco pays tribute to the victims of the LGBT holocaust.

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  Pink triangle as a symbol against homophobia, Sculpture to the homosexual collective inaugurated in 2006 in Sitges. Initially, the sculpture was covered with pink paint.

Further reading

• Beck, Gad (1999). An underground life: memoirs of a gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (in English). The University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299165000. OCLC 41308618.
• Fridgen, Michael (2014). The iron words (in English). ISBN 9780615992693. OCLC 927176874.
• Seel, Pierre (1997). Liberation was for others: memoirs of a gay survivor of the Nazi Holocaust (in English) (1st edition). Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306807564. OCLC 35657986.
• Seel, Pierre; Bitoux, Jean Le (2001). Pierre Seel. Gay deported. Edicions Bellaterra. ISBN 9788472901674.