The history of the Holocaust is often associated with the yellow Star of David, but behind the barbed wire of the Nazi concentration camps, there was a brutal hierarchy marked by different colors. One of the most humiliating symbols was pink triangle.
We tell the story of the “forgotten victims” of Nazism: from the heyday of Berlin as the “queer capital of the world” to the medical experiments at Buchenwald and the decades-long struggle for the right to be recognized as victims.
A patch in the shape of a pink equilateral triangle with its apex pointing downward was used in Nazi Germany to identify men of homosexual orientation in concentration camps. Sex between men was considered a crime and was criminally prosecuted in the Third Reich. Several decades later, a new generation of gay men and lesbians began using this symbol to commemorate the tragic past, demonstrate their struggle for human rights, and express hope for a new era of freedom, openness, and pride.
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In a nutshell: What is this article about?
Before Hitler, Germany was the world center of LGBT culture. Berlin was home to sexology institutes and hundreds of gay bars. The Nazis did not plan to commit genocide against gay people, but they wanted to “cure” them through terror. Sexual orientation was considered a threat to the fertility of the Aryan race. The pink triangle was a mark of the lowest caste. The mortality rate among those infected reached 60%. Liberation in 1945 did not bring freedom. Former prisoners were transferred from camps to prisons, and the law under which they were tried remained in effect until 1994.
Berlin Before the Catastrophe: The World's First Queer Capital
The tragedy of LGBTQ+ people in Germany seems particularly bitter when viewed against the backdrop of what life was like before 1933. After World War I, the Weimar Republic became a place of unprecedented freedom. There were more than 100 venues for gay people in Berlin, and the circulation of gay magazines reached one million copies.
The leading figure of that time was Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, founder of the Institute of Sexual Sciences. He was the first to issue “transvestite certificates” to transgender people to protect them from the police, and he argued that sexual orientation is an innate trait, not a vice.
The Machine of Repression: Paragraph 175 and the “Pink Lists”
Everything changed in 1933. For the Nazis, homosexuality was “stealing children from the state.” Heinrich Himmler claimed that sexuality was not a private matter, but a matter of life and death for the nation.
The repressions unfolded in stages:
- The Destruction of Science: In May 1933, the Nazis ransacked the Herschfeld Institute and burned its library.
- A Legal Trap: In 1935, the Nazis tightened Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code. Now, sexual intercourse was no longer required for an arrest—an “indecent” glance, an embrace, or an intercepted letter was enough.
- "Pink Lists": The Gestapo created special files on tens of thousands of suspects.
In total, during the Nazi regime, approximately 100,000 men were arrested, of whom up to 15,000 were sent to concentration camps.
Camp Hell: Why Was the Pink Triangle the Most Dangerous?
A system of colored “winkels” (triangles) was introduced in the concentration camps. Red was for political prisoners, yellow for Jews, and pink for gay men.
Those who wore the pink triangle were at the very bottom of the hierarchy. As survivor Pierre Zeel recalled, there was no solidarity among them; they were mocked by both the guards and the other prisoners.
According to historian Rüdiger Lautmann, the mortality rate among the “pinks” reached 60 percent, while among political prisoners it was 41 percent. They were sent to penal labor units in the harshest work sites, such as peat bogs, where people died of exhaustion within weeks.
At Buchenwald and other camps, experiments were conducted on gay men in an attempt to “cure” them through castration or the implantation of hormone capsules.
Faces Behind the Barbed Wire
Behind the dry statistics (about 100,000 people arrested and up to 15,000 sent to camps) lie real-life stories:
Friedrich Paul. He agreed to be castrated in the hope of gaining his freedom, but ended up in prisons and camps anyway.
Karl Horat. A male nurse who was sent to Auschwitz for refusing to reduce the food rations for Polish prisoners of war. Amid the confusion, he managed to swap his pink triangle for a red one (for political prisoners), which may have saved his life.
Robert Olberman. The founder of a youth group who died in Dachau at the age of 44 after being severely beaten.
And what about women?
Lesbians were not subjected to such systematic persecution, as the Nazis believed that women could always be forced to give birth. There was no specific law against them, but “undesirable” women were sent to camps under the pretext of being “asocial elements” with a black triangle on the form.
The Second Catastrophe: Life After 1945
When the Allies liberated the camps, the nightmare was not over for those who had been forced to wear the pink triangle. They were often not allowed to return home but were transferred to regular prisons to “serve out” the sentences handed down by Nazi courts.
Paragraph 175 remained in effect in both parts of Germany. In West Germany, approximately 100,000 more people were convicted under this law between 1949 and 1969.
Survivors of gay camps were not officially recognized as victims of Nazism; they were denied compensation, and their stories were suppressed for decades. Official rehabilitation in Germany did not occur until 2002.
From Shame to Pride: The Rebirth of a Symbol
It wasn't until the 1970s that a new generation of activists decided to reclaim the symbol of their oppression. The pink triangle was turned upside down and became an international symbol of the struggle for human rights and the memory of those who perished.
Hate hasn't gone away—it's just taking on new forms. Remembering those who went through hell while wearing a pink patch is a form of resistance against oblivion.
Telling these stories aloud ensures that the people who were once tried to be erased from history will never disappear completely. Today, the pink triangle stands as a symbol that no regime can take away a person’s right to love and dignity.
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