The Pink Triangle: LGBTQ+ Persecutions under the Nazi Regime

Policemen standing guard outside of the Eldorado nightclub in Berlin – it was hotspot for Berlin’s gay and lesbian community. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

In Germany, gay communities were growing and developing during the Weimar Republic. While this was a time of political and economic turmoil, it was also a time of cultural and artistic freedom. Germans were publicly challenging gender and sexual norms, especially in big cities such as Berlin, Cologne, and Hamburg. Some groups were even advocating for the decriminalization of homosexual relations between men. These groups also cooperated with other reform groups that advocated for new legal approaches to prostitution, birth control, and abortion. It was a relatively freeing atmosphere and gay communities and networks were thriving with the help of gay newspapers and journals, such as Die Freundschaft (Friendship) and Der Eigene (implies “his own man”).

While the gay communities in Germany were growing and thriving, they were not always welcome. Prior to gaining power, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis condemned Weimar culture as “decadent and degenerate” partly because of the era’s openness to expressions of sexuality and the visibility of gay communities.

Prisoners standing during a roll call. Each wears a striped hat and uniform bearing colored, triangular badges and identification numbers. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Robert A. Schmuhl

These patches were used by the Nazi regime to classify prisoners in the concentration camps. The pink triangle with the T (T may be for Czechoslovakian) identified homosexual men in the camps. - Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio

Article Source: USHMM

Once the Nazis came to power, they sought to dismantle the gay culture and networks that had developed. In 1935, the Nazis revised Paragraph 175, the statute that banned sexual relations between men, making a wide range of intimate and sexual behaviors punishable crimes. The Nazis eventually escalated to arresting, persecuting, and even castrating gay men. Between 5,000 and 15,000 men were imprisoned in concentration camps as "homosexual" offenders. Inverted pink triangles were used to designate these inmates, and they were often among the most abused groups within the camps, according to survivors.

Let's remember and honor all of the LGBTQ+ victims of the Nazis this Pride Month.