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What is the pink triangle? What happened to gay prisoners of The Pink Triangle The pink triangle is one of the the holocaust during the war? many badges used to identify prisoners Few survived to tell their stories, and You in Nazi concentration camps during the but those who did tell their stories holocaust. Wearing the pink triangle described: identified prisoners as homosexual men. • Rape with broken pieces of wood Sex between men was illegal in • Being tortured for names of other Germany under paragraph 175, and as homosexual men the Nazis occupied more territory they • Medical experimentation spread the law to countries like France • Being worked to death where homosexuality was legal, if not • Seeing their lovers being ripped still taboo. apart by dogs • Seeing other gay men beaten to death • Castration "We must exterminate these people root and branch. We can't permit such danger to What does it mean? the country; the homosexual What is its history? must be entirely eliminated." Why are we angry about it? Men wearing the Pink Triangle Heinrich Himmler What happened after the war? But weren’t the Nazis and Hitler gay? The Pink Triangle and Activism After the war, gay prisoners were While there were members of the In the 70s the Pink Triangle required to continue serving their Nazi party who were gay the most became a symbol for gay rights protests sentences in prisons. They were not prominent were executed. and in 1987 the ACT UP created the seen as victims but instead as criminals, The idea that Hitler is gay SILENCE = DEATH graphic with an and were treated as such. became popular as a method to mock inverted Pink Triangle. Pierre Seel, who wrote an him, which is pretty insulting when you autobiography about his experiences of consider that gay people actually exist the holocaust, was beaten by and were targeted by Nazis. homophobes in the mid-90s after In fact many homosexuals fought appearing on television. the Nazis. Willem Arondeus was a It wasn’t until 2002 that the member of the Dutch Resistance and German government apologised or took part bombing the Amsterdam payed reparations for the treatment of public records to prevent the Nazis from homosexuals during the holocaust. identifying Jewish people. His final words before execution: “Tell the people that gays are no cowards!” Because of the seriousness of the symbol many gay people do not think it Gad Beck, the last known gay should have been reclaimed for activism. holocaust survivor, borrowed a Hitler As for heterosexuals who appropriate Youth uniform to free his lover Manfred the symbol: Lewin from a pre-deportation camp. Once Beck and Lewin left the camp Lewin said he couldn’t abandon his GO FUCK YOURSELF! ‘The Kiss’ is part of a homosexual holocaust memorial in Berlin family. Lewin went back to the camp alone and was murdered in Auschwitz. .

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ISSUE #73 New Quark
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