The Nazi regime rried out a mpaign agast male homosexualy and persecuted gay men between 1933 and 1945.
Contents:
- THE PK TRIANGLE: FROM NAZI LABEL TO SYMBOL OF GAY PRI
- NAZI SYMBOL FOR GAYS, NOW RECLAIMED, TOWERS OVER SAN FRANCIS
- GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME
- RUDOLF BRAZDA: LAST KNOWN SURVIVOR OF THE 'PK TRIANGLE' GAY MAT OF NAZI NCENTRATN MPS
THE PK TRIANGLE: FROM NAZI LABEL TO SYMBOL OF GAY PRI
Pk triangl were origally ed ncentratn mps to intify gay men. * pink triangle gay *
As part of their missn to racially and culturally “purify” Germany, the Nazis arrted thoands of LGBT dividuals, mostly gay men, whom they viewed as Uned Stat Holot Memorial Mm timat 100, 000 gay men were arrted and between 5, 000 and 15, 000 were placed ncentratn mps. )Corbis/Getty ImagHomosexual prisoners at the ncentratn mp at Sachsenhsen, Germany, wearg pk triangl on their uniforms on December 19, the mps, gay men were treated pecially harshly, by guards and fellow prisoners alike.
“There was no solidary for the homosexual prisoners; they belonged to the lowt ste, ” Pierre Seel, a gay Holot survivor, wrote his memoir I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi timated 65 percent of gay men ncentratn mps died between 1933 and 1945.
NAZI SYMBOL FOR GAYS, NOW RECLAIMED, TOWERS OVER SAN FRANCIS
The pk triangle has been a symbol for var LGBTQIA+ inti. Inially ed as a badge of shame for "gay men" the Nazi Germany of the 1930s and 40s, was revived the 70s and 80s as a symbol of prott agast homophobia and ever sce reclaimed as a posive symbol of... * pink triangle gay *
Horac Villalobos/Corbis/Getty ImagMemorial plaqu for homosexuals, Jehovah's Wns and Wehrmacht serters are placed where once stood one of the molished barracks Buchenwald ncentratn mp near Weimar, Germany. In 1986, six New York Cy activists created a poster wh the words SILENCE = DEATH and a bright pk upward-facg triangle, meant to ll attentn to the AIDs crisis that was cimatg populatns of gay men across the untry. And the fact that was almost impossible to nvict anyone unls he nfsed to such a crime urt meant that police jt kept a watchful eye on gay bars and events, and Germany end up beg home to a vibrant gay muny.
Historian Robert Beachy argu that, ironilly, the law spurred scientific tert the study of sexual preferenc, and that rearch tend to enurage a more scientific unrstandg of human sexualy, which further allowed the ia of gay rights to flourish.
Hler saw gay men as a threat to his mpaign to purify Germany, pecially bee their partnerships uld not bear children who would grow the Aryan race he wanted to cultivate.
GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME
Check out OFM for more on the pk triangle, the symbol gay men were forced to wear at ncentratn mps durg the Holot. * pink triangle gay *
Durg that perd, gay-iendly bars and clubs started beg shut down, thori burned the books at a major rearch stutn voted to the study of sexualy, and gay aternal anizatns were shuttered. The efforts only creased after the Night of the Long Kniv, the 1934 purge of Nazi lears who were acced of tryg to overthrow Hler; they clud Storm Troopers lear Ernst Röhm, whom the SS murred, later cg his homosexualy as jtifitn for his murr. Some were ed as guea pigs var medil experiments to fd a cure for typh fever and a cure for homosexualy, the latter of which led the SS to ject them wh ttosterone to see if would make them straight.
As one of the USHMM’s curators has poted out, even as the Allied powers refully worked to scb Nazism om Germany, they left that part alone — perhaps bee they had anti-gay and anti-sodomy laws of their own.
As the gay liberatn movement grew Ameri the ’70s and the ’80s, so did awarens of the persecutn of gays durg the Holot, as books and data about perd started beg published. Data on the victims started to be ced 1977, after a statistil analysis by soclogist Rudiger Ltmann of Bremen Universy claimed that as many as 60% of the gay men sent ncentratn mps may have have died.
RUDOLF BRAZDA: LAST KNOWN SURVIVOR OF THE 'PK TRIANGLE' GAY MAT OF NAZI NCENTRATN MPS
The Nazi dictatorship policed, prosecuted, and ultimately murred thoands of gay men durg s 12 years of le. * pink triangle gay *
The first reference to pk triangl TIME also appeared that year, a story about gay-rights activists Miami who attached the symbols to their cloth as a show of solidary while prottg a vote to repeal a law protectg gay people om hog discrimatn.
In 1979, Mart Sherman’s play Bent, spired by Heger’s memoir, opened on Broadway; the play, one of the characters tras his pk triangle for a yellow star, “which giv him preferential treatment over the homosexuals, ” as TIME’s review put .