When we gay people wear or use the "pink triangle", it is to us just a symbol, an emblem of gay liberation, that rarely and vaguely recalls to us that it was the way Nazis "marked" the homosexuals. Very seldom we think that this "mark" meant, for the bearers in a Concentration Camp, that they were the most despised inmates, often even more than the Jews, who anyway were the "lowest" class in Nazi Lagers.

Jews were barbarously, and systematically eliminated as a people, because of racial hatred and of an official policy of Nazis. Homosexuals were not officially doomed to be exterminated, but they were just abandoned in the hands of the most sadistic attitudes of Camps' guards and officials, who mistreated, oppressed and killed them just for "fun". It was a personal hatred deriving from contempt and scorn, the same hatred that "justifies" the bashing and the killing of so many gay people even in our days, in our countries.

The pink triangle, transformed thus by homosexuals from a mark of Nazi persecution into an emblem of gay liberation, gained great currency but lost its link to the personal dramatic experience of the gay holocaust. Today, after more than half a century, the symbol can be associated once again with some men's names, with their voices, their story. This is the reason why we decided to open this section of out Memorial.

The number of homosexuals who died in Nazi concentration camps is unknown and likely to remain so. Although statistics are available on the number of men brought to trial on charges of "lewd and unnatural behaviour," many more were sent to camps without the benefit of a trial. Moreover, many homosexuals were summarily executed by firing squads; this was particularly the case with gays in the military -- which encompassed nearly every able-bodied man during the final years of the war. Finally, many concentration camps systematically destroyed all their records when it became apparent that German defeat was imminent.

Please, read the following sections (click on the pink triangle)
5.1.1 - The beginning of persecution 5.1.2 - Homosexuals targeted 5.1.3 - Tracking down suspected homosexuals
5.2 - Arrested, deported, killed
5.3 - Homosexuals in the German Army in War time
5.4.1 - Homosexuals in Concentration camps normally died within months 5.4.2 - A difficult (and painful) "coming out"
5.5 - Forgotten Holocaust (article by Rochambeau)