Pink Triangle

The pink triangle began as a mark of shame. In Nazi Germany, concentration camp badges used colored triangles to sort prisoners, and a pink triangle identified men imprisoned as gay under Paragraph 175, the section of the German penal code that criminalized homosexual acts. Those prisoners were often treated with special cruelty. Starting in the 1960s and 1970s, activists in West Germany and then in New York and the wider movement reclaimed the symbol, turning a badge of persecution into one of protest, pride, and remembrance. The AIDS activist group ACT UP later paired an upward-pointing pink triangle with the slogan "Silence = Death." Today the pink triangle stands for both LGBTQ+ liberation and memory of those the Nazis targeted.