The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates 100,000 gay men were arrested and between 5,000 and 15,000 were placed in concentration camps. As part of their mission to racially and culturally “purify” Germany, the Nazis arrested thousands of LGBT individuals, mostly gay men, whom they viewed as degenerate. Homosexuality was technically made illegal in Germany in 1871, but it was rarely enforced until the Nazi Party took power in 1933. It wasn’t until the 1970s that activists would reclaim the symbol as one of liberation. In Nazi Germany, a downward-pointing pink triangle was sewn onto the shirts of gay men in concentration camps-to identify and further dehumanize them. Pink triangles were originally used in concentration camps to identify gay prisoners.īefore the pink triangle became a worldwide symbol of gay power and pride, it was intended as a badge of shame.
