As the world marks Holocaust Memorial Day,
PinkNews remembers all those in the LGBT+ community that were persecuted by the Nazis and how the pink triangle, used to identify gay or bisexual men in concentration camps, became a symbol for gay rights.
When Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party seized power in Germany in July 1933, the dictatorship moved to persecute and murder minority groups, including Jews, LGBT+ people, the Romani people, and political prisoners.
Beginning in 1933, the Nazis built a network of concentration camps throughout Germany, where “undesirable” groups were detained, including Jewish people and gay men.
This persecution continued following the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and, between 1941 and 1945, the Nazi Party systematically murdered six million European Jews as part of a plan known as “The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” in extermination camps and mass shootings. This genocide is referred to as the Holocaust, or the Shoah in Hebrew
Gay men in a Nazi concentration camp
On Holocaust Memorial Day 2021, we remember the victims, LGBT+ and otherwise, murdered by Nazis, and explore the significance of the pink triangle.
On Wednesday (27 January), 76 years after the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated, buildings around Britain will be lit in purple, with those who are able to encouraged to light a candle in their window at 8pm GMT to remember those murdered simply because of who they were.
Every year on Holocaust Memorial Day, the world honours the millions of people who lost their lives during the Holocaust (as well as those who died under Nazi persecution and in subsequent genocides, such as those in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur).