The pink triangle (German: Rosa Winkel) was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify male prisoners who were sent there because of their homosexuality. Every prisoner had to wear a downward-pointing triangle on his or her jacket, the colour of which was to categorise him or her by "kind". Other colors identified Jews (two triangles superimposed as a yellow star), political prisoners, Jehovah's Witnesses, "anti-social" prisoners, and others the Nazis deemed undesirable. Pink and yellow triangles could be combined if a prisoner was deemed to be gay and Jewish (see Nazi concentration camp table of inmate markings).
Originally intended as a badge of shame, the pink triangle (often inverted from its Nazi usage) has been reclaimed as an international symbol of gay pride and the gay rights movement, and is second in popularity only to the rainbow flag.
Read more about Pink Triangle: Nazi Use in Concentration Camps, Gay Rights Symbol
Famous quotes containing the word pink:
“And I threw a little earth
on the pink coffin
covered by the fake plastic grass
and said O.K., God,
if it’s the end of the world,
it must be necessary.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)