Pink triangle

The badge the Nazis forced on men imprisoned for homosexuality, later reclaimed by gay activists as a symbol of memory and of the fight against AIDS.

The pink triangle is the badge the Nazis sewed on the uniforms of men imprisoned in concentration camps for homosexuality, and the symbol gay men later took back as a sign of memory, defiance and survival. Turned upside down and printed above the words Silence = Death, it became the emblem of the fight against AIDS.

It is not a cheerful symbol like the rainbow flag, and it is not meant to be. When you see it on a banner at Pride, it is there to say: this is what was done to us, and we are still here.

Where it comes from

Germany had criminalized sex between men since 1871 with Paragraph 175, and in 1935 the Nazis broadened the law so that almost any intimacy between men could be punished. Scholars estimate about 100,000 arrests under it during the Nazi years and roughly 53,400 convictions. Between 5,000 and 15,000 men were sent to concentration camps as homosexual offenders.

Around 1937 and 1938 the SS introduced a color-coded system of badges for prisoners, and these men typically wore a pink triangle. From November 1942 camp commandants could order them castrated, and an unknown number died in the camps.

The end of the war did not end it. Sex between men stayed illegal in Germany, tens of thousands more men were convicted after 1945, West Germany kept the Nazi version of the law on its books, and the convictions from the Nazi era were only overturned in 2002. A memorial to the persecuted homosexuals was unveiled in Berlin in 2008.

Taking it back

Decades later gay activists began wearing the pink triangle as a reminder of that history, turning a mark of shame into a mark of pride. Its most famous comeback came with AIDS. In New York a group of six activists, the Silence=Death Collective, spent months designing a poster: a pink triangle on a black background above the words Silence = Death. It went up across Manhattan in early 1987, and the six later joined ACT UP, which made it its logo.

How it is used today

Today the pink triangle turns up on Pride banners, on memorials, on pins and on the jackets of older activists who marched with ACT UP. It carries more weight than most symbols, so it is rarely used lightly.

It sits alongside other symbols of our history, from lavender to the rainbow, as a reminder that before being queer was celebrated, it was a crime.

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