The Pink Triangle: From Nazi Persecution to Symbol of Pride

How a badge of humiliation worn by gay men in Nazi concentration camps became one of the most powerful symbols of LGBTQ+ memory and resistance. In the spring of 1937, a prisoner arrived at Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. On his uniform was a pink triangle, pointing downward. He was not Jewish. He was not a political prisoner. He had been arrested under Paragraph 175 — a German law that criminalized sexual acts between men. Thousands of men wore that same triangle. Most did not survive the war. Paragraph 175 and the Nazi State Paragraph 175 was not a Nazi invention. The law dated back to 1871, when the German Empire was founded. It made "unnatural fornication" between men a…