The Pink Triangle — from silence to recognition

Men were killed — not on a battlefield, but in a camp — for the sole reason that they loved. For decades, their suffering had no name in the history books. Perhaps because one of them was from your family.

"Being human means being responsible. It means feeling ashamed in the face of hardship that did not seem to depend on oneself." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939

A symbol born in horror

In Nazi concentration camps, prisoners wore coloured triangles sewn onto their clothing to indicate the reason for their detention. Red for political opponents. Yellow for Jews. And a pink triangle, pointing downwards, for homosexuals.

These men were not fighting, not threatening anyone. They were simply loving. Between 1933 and 1945, approximately 50,000 men were convicted in Germany under Paragraph 175 of the criminal code for "indecent acts between men." Around 15,000 were deported to the camps. Many died from exhaustion, starvation, forced medical experiments, or were executed. And when the Allies opened the camp gates, survivors wearing the pink triangle were sometimes transferred directly to prison: the law that had condemned them was still in force.

Decades in the shadows

After the war, the suffering of homosexual deportees was not recognised. They did not appear on the first official lists of Nazi victims. In France, a law from the Vichy era criminalising homosexuality was retained by successive governments until 1982. In West Germany, Paragraph 175 — in its Nazi version — remained in force until 1969.

For years, men who had survived the camps returned home in silence, unable to speak of what they had lived through — because speaking would have meant accusing themselves. The last known camp survivor to wear the pink triangle, Rudolf Brazda, died in 2011 at the age of 98. It was only in 2008, when he was 95, that France invited him to Paris to commemorate the Deportation.

The fight to exist

On the night of 27 to 28 June 1969, in New York, regulars at the Stonewall Inn — drag queens, trans people, gay men, lesbian women — refused for the first time to be arrested without resistance. Three nights of riots later, the LGBTQ+ rights movement was born. This date remains, every year, at the heart of Pride marches across the world.

In France, progress came slowly, fought for rather than granted. The decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1982. The first AIDS organisations in the 1980s, as an entire generation was disappearing in governmental indifference. Civil partnerships (PACS) in 1999, after exhausting parliamentary debates and insults hurled across the Assembly floor. Marriage for all in 2013, passed amid jeers — and also amid flowers.

And what about you?

These stories seem to belong to other times, other countries, other lives. They do not.

There may be, in your family, someone who waited a long time before daring to say who they really were. A son who took years to find the words. A brother whose admission changed how you see the world. A cousin you never truly knew because they never felt free to speak. Studies suggest that around 8 to 10% of the population identifies as LGBTQ+. In any ordinary family, there is always at least one.

Remembering the history of the pink triangle is not about reopening old wounds. It is about understanding why some people are still afraid. It is about understanding that the simple right to love has sometimes cost lives — and that those lives had to be given so that others could live them freely.