Among the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, those who inhabited the camps were forced to wear triangles symbolizing the “crime” they had committed to land them there. For example, Jews were forced to wear a yellow Star of David (a “double triangle” in this case), Jehovah’s witnesses wore a single purple triangle, criminals wore green triangles, Gypsies wore black, emigrants wore blue, and homosexuals and transgender men were forced to wear inverted pink triangles¹.
I’m going to hone in now on the triangles that the homosexual men were forced to wear because, despite the fact that the inverted pink triangle used to be a symbol that represented a lack of individuality and severe oppression, it now represents alliance and strength within the LGBT community.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the number of gay men arrested during Hitler’s regime reached approximately 100,000, and of those about 5,000-15,000 were placed in concentration camps. Out of all those imprisoned in the camps, only ~35% made it out alive and many remained jailed until the 1970s².
You may be asking yourself, “this all sounds pretty terrible, when does any of this become a symbol of pride” or even “why would anyone want this to become a symbol of pride?”, and I’m going to answer the when aspect now. The first time that history saw the pink triangle used as a symbol of pride and solidarity rather than as something to be deathly ashamed of was during Germany’s first gay rights organization in October of 1973 and was known as the “Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin”, or simply HAW for short³.
The pink triangle was the symbol that was shown on banners and stickers during HAW to identify the wearer as gay, but instead of it being something shameful, this time it was something to be proud of; instead of remembering the Holocaust as purely a time of death and suffering for the homosexual community, now think of it as a time that brought these individuals together and fighting against the regime that was trying to silence their rights.
Throughout the rest of the 20th century, the image of an inverted pink triangle was used to represent unity amongst the LGBT community, for example, in 1987 it was used in the official logo for the “March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights” and then most notably, it was and is still used as the logo for “ACT UP”, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power4.
This transformation of the pink triangle by the LGBT community from a symbol of hatred to one of love and support was a decision that intended to appeal to the hearts of onlookers at rallies and at organizations. Just like the LGBT community has reclaimed the pink triangle as their own, so have many communities that survived the tragedies of the Holocaust reclaimed their triangles as symbols of triumph in the face of adversity.
1 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/stars-triangles-and-markings
2 https://www.history.com/news/pink-triangle-nazi-concentration-camps
4 https://www.britannica.com/topic/ACT-UP
Image 1 source: https://www.berlinale.de/de/archiv/jahresarchive/2017/02_programm_2017/02_Filmdatenblatt_2017_201710598.html#tab=filmStills&item=201710598_1
Image 2 source: https://i1.wp.com/nursingclio.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/out-is-in-gay-rights-button_stonewall-museum-archives.jpg?fit=1018%2C1024&ssl=1