Redefining a Symbol
The Pink Triangle and the Memorialization of Homosexual Victims of National Socialism
Jami Gisel
Abstract
The Pink Triangle, which was used by the Nazis to identify homosexual prisoners within the concentration camp system, was then later co-opted by gay rights activists in West Germany and to an extent America during the late 1970s and early 1980s to help raise awareness for the current wave of activism. The symbol has had intermediate use into the 21st century as a symbol of the queer movement, however, this paper argues that the specific context which the Pink Triangle refers to does not lend itself to be used as a larger symbol of the 2SLGBTQIA+ movement today. The symbol itself pertains to a specific horrible period of queer history that only refers to a largely white, cis gay male victim group. This history deserves to be told, but the diverse global nature of today's 2SLGBTQIA+ movement should have a symbol which is as universal as the movement is, not one that only represents one specific group of people.
Introduction
With the increasing visibility and scholarly attention on homosexual victims of the Nazi Era, there has been an equal effort to memorialize this separate group of victims. William Jake Newsome cites 23 memorials worldwide dedicated to queer people persecuted under National Socialism. The Pink Triangle, which was the category used by the Nazis to identify homosexuals within concentration camps, is now used to commemorate these victims and as a symbol of gay rights activism (Newsome 202). This paper looks at how the Pink Triangle is used in the memorialization and commemoration of these victims in the decades after the end of the war and how it became a symbol of the gay rights movement. While the Pink Triangle has come to represent the historic and continued persecution of homosexuality, its specific historic context makes it unsuitable as a larger queer symbol. I argue that due to its specific national context of Nazi oppression of largely white, cis gay men, the Pink Triangle should not be used as a generalization for the global 2SLGBTQIA+ community today. This history does not deserve to be forgotten, but centering an entire global movement around one dark part of queer history does not lend itself to the inclusivity of the queer rights movement today.
Self-Locations
Before starting this paper I would like to acknowledge that I am a white settler from the traditional and unceded or stolen territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Coast Salish Nations in what is now commonly referred to as Vancouver, Canada. For the last five years I have been living as an uninvited visitor on WSÁNEĆ lands while travelling to the lands of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples to pursue my undergraduate degree at UVic. I am honoured to be able to live here on Coast Salish lands and look forward to continuing to develop my relationship and responsibilities to the waters, skies, spirits and human and non-human beings through my future work and learnings. While this paper does not discuss issues of colonization of Indigenous Rights, the continued occupation of stolen lands here in British Columbia is something which is always on my mind as I go through my academic career.
My goal with this paper is not to delegitimize those who identified with the Pink Triangle symbol either in the past or present, nor is it to create one definite conclusion that everyone must agree with. As a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community today, I do not pretend to know what it was like living either during Nazi persecution or in the decades of silence afterward. This is not to discredit the decades of work queer activists put into gaining public acceptance and equal rights which I now benefit from living in a country where it is illegal to discriminate against someone for their sexual orientation. I also acknowledge the continued persecution of queer people not only here in Canada, but worldwide and the continued work that needs to be done by queer activists. I dedicate this paper to all the queer activists, past and present, who fight for freedom, visibility and justice.
Background
The end of Nazi terror in 1945 saw the liberation of millions of people persecuted under various racial and ethnic discrimination laws that governed life in what was called Greater Germany. However, for many people, this persecution did not end with the defeat of the Nazis but continued into the latter half of the 20th Century (Newsome 173). We can see this in the continued existence of different versions of Paragraph 175 in both East and West Germany. Paragraph 175 was the law which persecuted specifically homosexual men (not lesbians or trans people). It was originally written in 1871 and then amended in 1935 by the Nazis to broaden its conviction powers (2). During this time, it is estimated that between 50,000 and 63,000 men were convicted for homosexuality (Rorholm and Gambrell 162). While in 1950 the law was reverted to the original 1871 wording within East Germany, West Germany declared that the changes made by the Nazis in 1935 were not against the new Constitution and was kept (Newsome 217). Between 1949 and 1969 when the law was repealed to allow same sex partnerships to men over 21, over one hundred thousand men were arrested and around fifty nine thousand convicted (68). In Austria, their own anti-homosexual laws, Paragraph 129b, which included both male and female expressions of homosexuality, and used in much the same way as the German law during the war, was not repealed until 1971 (Krickler 7). Because of this continued criminalization of homosexual acts (often specifically targeting sodomy, but the Nazi amendments to Paragraph 175 made it easier to convict individuals because physical proof was no longer needed), those who went to concentration camps under the Pink Triangle were unable to speak up about their experiences or receive compensation for their treatment by the Nazis. Their convictions were not overturned until 2002 and compensation given, however the majority of the victims had passed away before these changes were made (Newsome 219). In both cases, the exclusion of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals in these laws did not mean they were safe, they were still persecuted, arrested, and harassed. While this paper does not look into the persecution of trans people specifically, I would like to acknowledge its existence both in the past and present.
When talking about who should be considered a “victim” of the Nazi period, the Jewish experience has become the “gold standard” of suffering to which all other victim groups must measure up (Wilke 152). Historical research and focus then becomes a numbers game with the number of those incarcerated under a specific colour of the triangle and total deaths giving more “credibility” to a victim group. This reduced victims to the categories that the Nazis gave them and ignores the suffering that many people experienced outside of the concentration camp system (153). The focus of historical research ignores the “tens of thousands of gay men [who] were convicted of homosexuality in civilian courts and sent to prisons. Others were convicted in military courts and either executed or sent to frontline units as cannon fodder. Still, others were categorized as mentally ill, institutionalized and some killed in the ‘euthanasia’ program”[1] (153). Conditions within these prisons were not safe either, with victims becoming targets of harassment by other prisoners or guards, forced into solitary confinement and/or castrated (Newsome 54). After liberation, those convicted under Paragraph 175 were not released, as Allied troops treated them as criminals and transferred them to civil prisons for the rest of their sentence (59). There are also other victims who were never convicted and either fled Germany altogether or conformed to heterosexual marriages to avoid persecution. In the memorialization process, these intricacies are ignored and thus erased in order to memorialize only one specific category of victims. Hence, it is hard to recognize that “state violence often involves the persecution of people with different and intersecting identity markers” (Wilke 139). Not only can this hide the intricacies of oppression but “a focus on the apparently distinct categories of persecution – the yellow star, the pink triangle, the red triangle – can hide the violence of constructing these categories and the violence of maintaining them as separate and distinct” (144). If we understand this flaw in our thinking of victimhood (which is further discussed in the case of lesbian memorialization and victim status) how did the Pink Triangle become a symbol of the gay rights movement? This can be understood in the context of the beginning of the gay rights movement in both West Germany and the United States.
The 1970s and Gay Rights Activism
By the 1970s, “as the visibility of gays and lesbians increased, the past became a resource for claims in the present” (Wilke 138). In West Germany the first full account of a gay concentration camp survivor hit shelves in 1972 with the Pink Triangle front and centre on its cover. It seemed only natural for gay rights activists to don the Pink Triangle themselves to fight for queer liberation (Newsome 83). The Men with the Pink Triangle written under the pseudonym Heinz Heger, who was Austrian, brought light to this silent history at a time when there was much mobilization for the gay rights movement. On top of the publishing of this book, the film, It’s Not the Homosexual Who’s Perverse, but Rather the Situation in Which He Lives was shown widely in gay circles and can largely be attributed to the beginning of a large wave of gay rights mobilization in West Germany (88). The new emphasis on being out and proud caused much debate within these new queer groups as tension rose between members who were “straight passing” and those who were not. The idea to wear the Pink Triangle in everyday life became a way to show one's gay identity and protest the continued mistreatment of gay people (92). Using this Pink Triangle in this way also can preserve “the integrity of the people it represents (all the people – LGBTQAI+ and Holocaust survivor alike), to unify them for mobilizing political action against oppressive and even cruel social structures” (Rorholm and Gambrell 68). The Pink Triangle, is used here as a catch-all for the oppression and discrimination of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, to bring awareness to the continuing oppression that is enshrined into the political and social structures of the globe. Using the Pink Triangle to identify oneself as homosexual, similar to how the Nazis labelled homosexuals within concentration camps, might sound strange, but it was a way to draw parallels to the past and show how the society of the 1970s was not accepting of visible expressions of gay identity.
This growing focus on the Pink Triangle also made its way to America as a transatlantic gay identity began to form and relationships between organizations developed. The first documented instance of gay activists using the Pink Triangle in the United States took place in 1974 at the suggestion of the scholar and gay activist David Thorstad (Newsome 107). Thorstad, along with fellow gay activist and scholar Dr. James Steakley had previously done research on German gay life in the early 20th century and wanted to dispel the narrative that Jews were the only victims of the Holocaust, which was circulating at the time (109). The spread of this history was largely done through informal avenues as there was no historical scholarship on the persecution of homosexuals and The Men With the Pink Triangle was not yet published in English (111). At this time, the gay rights movement focused heavily on historic and continuing oppression as well as seeking equal civil rights. In this context, it made sense to use the Pink Triangle as a symbol to organize around. It also helped in the development of transnational identities, which creates strong bonds between queer people all over the world. The development of memorials to homosexual victims of National Socialism outside of Europe is a testament to the deep connections and kinship between queer people across the globe.
It can be argued that “for the modern LGBTQAI+ community, the dangerous memory of the Holocaust and the Pink Triangle prisoners is the catalyst for transformation and liberation” (Rorholm and Gambrell 67). While I do believe this to be true in the context of the late 20th century, specifically the 1970s, placing this statement on the current iteration of the 2SLGBTQIA+ movement seems deductive. In recent years, there has been a pushback on previous generations of queer activism for ignoring the intersections of race and gender in their campaigns. Because the focus and leaders of these early gay rights movements were predominantly white cis men (or white cis women), this is what the general public began to associate with queerness. In this way being “gay” becomes associated with being “white”. Allan Bérubé dives into this topic in his chapter “How Gay Stays White and What Kind of White it Stays,” explaining the intersection of race and class in gay male identity and the erasure of gay men of colour (234). Race is not a component of white gay male activism because white people often do not see themselves as being a racial category. It is inevitable then that “these lived assumptions, and the privileges on which they are based, form a powerful camouflage woven from a web of unquestioned beliefs—that gay whiteness is unmarked and unremarkable, universal and representative, powerful and protective, a cohesive bond” (237). Understanding this, the emergence of the Pink Triangle within gay rights activism in the 1970s takes on a new lens. The majority of white gay men organized around a symbol of their specific oppression, and in the case of West German groups, around their national identity. Even now, “despite the very public work of antiracist collectives to draw attention to differentiated experiences of marginalization in the past as well as today, there emerged one “fundamental truth,” one that scholars have seen operating in other parts of Germany’s queer imaginary as well: that history’s victims, overwhelmingly, are cis, male, and white” (Evans 158). This ignores decades of work by lesbian feminist scholars as well as work by anti-racist activists who seek to show the complex and interconnected histories of seemingly forgotten groups of people.
I will discuss the erasure of lesbian persecutions later in this paper, but I also wanted to bring to light here another issue surrounding sexuality in these early campaigns. While this is a simplification, the erasure of bisexuality in activism and queer theory during the early years of engagement of the 1970s shows the non unified and exclusive space of the gay rights movement to all identities. Angelides has posited “that efforts to deconstruct the hetero/homosexual structure have foundered, on the one hand, because of a failure to address the history of (bi)sexuality and on the other, because of the methodological tensions between gay/lesbian history, feminism, and queer theory” (127). This is also the case for other sexual identities such as pansexuality or polysexuality. While I understand the use of the dichotomy between straight and gay/lesbian in these early campaigns to bring light to this community, it pushed out many diverse identities. We can still see the effects of this on the queer community today with the presence of biphobia (and transphobia when we expand this to issues of gender) within queer spaces.
Since the queer community has problems discussing the intersectionality of gender, race, and sexuality, how can we, as a community, become more inclusive, anti-racist and feminist if we are still holding onto a symbol of the sole persecution of one group of people that ignores so many other stories and experiences? The queer experience is not solely that of being a cis, white gay man. Holding onto the Pink Triangle as a symbol of the gay rights movement can play into Nazi marginalization as “separating all victims into distinct categories denies the possibilities of complex or misrecognized identities and fails to interrogate the representational violence entailed in reducing victims to their ‘imposed identities’ or categories into which their persecutors grouped them” (Wilke 155). It can also unintentionally erase the experience of other marginalized groups while ignoring the continuation of the marginalization of gay men after the end of the Nazi Period. While activists in the 1970s said the use of the Pink Triangle could be extrapolated to all queer suffering, as we have seen, the reality of their activism (generally, there are exceptions to this) was not as inclusive as this ideal suggests. Much of this activism also claimed to be inclusive to issues of gender and race while actually ignoring problems brought up by other marginalized members of the community
Memorialization
From the beginning of the process of memorializing homosexual victims of the Nazi era, the Pink Triangle has been commonly used. This should come as no surprise as the same queer groups who were wearing the Pink Triangle in their marches were pushing for the creation of these memorials. The first memorial to Homosexual Victims of National Socialism was put up in 1984 at Mauthausen concentration camp by Homosexuelle Initiativen Vienna (HOSI) in the shape of a Pink Triangle (Krickler 13). “The inscription “Beaten to Death, Silenced to Death” called attention both to the historical persecution of the Nazis’ gay victims and the subsequent silencing of their suffering” referring to the years of fighting to be considered victims of National Socialism (Newsome 177-178). In 1985, HOSI also participated in the annual liberation ceremony at the camp, and while there was some backlash by the organizing committee, there was also a significant amount of public support for their continued participation (Krickler 13). Since then, there have been many memorials put up across the world. Some were placed in concentration camps such as Dachau and Sachsenhausen, others in city centres like Amsterdam and Berlin, some even as far away as San Francisco, USA, and Sydney, Australia (Newsome 221-223). If we understand that “memorials not only help to enshrine historic injury at the root of contemporary identities but also make group boundaries appear clear instead of fuzzy and identify the memorialized group with only righteous suffering,” then we can understand how the use of the Pink Triangle can also set clear boundaries as to who is and who is not included in the gay rights movement (Wilke 146). If the focus is solely placed on the memorialization of the Pink Triangle, there will be people whose stories and suffering get forgotten in memory work and in social justice discussions. As previously discussed, centering a symbol that refers to the suffering of primarily white gay men, does not remedy the historic erasure of issues of race and gender in the gay rights movement. The reality of white cis-gendered male privilege has created a landscape where “many self-appointed leaders of the gay rights movement tailored their advocacy to that reality” in order to try to gain support and legitimacy (Bell 2). While the reality of this privilege is not the fault of gay white cis-gendered activists, their prominent leadership and iconography (the Pink Triangle) can erase the presence of other perspectives within the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
The Persecution and Memorialization of Lesbian Victims
There has and continues to be a debate over the lesbian experience and persecution by the Nazis during the war. According to the concentration camp categorization system, the Pink Triangle was specifically focused on homosexual men, not women, as “German lesbians did not face criminal prosecution during the Nazi era because female homosexuality was not illegal” under Paragraph 175 (Krickler 5). Because of this, many have argued that lesbians were not systematically persecuted like gay men and, therefore, they should not be accounted as a victim group of the Nazis. Lesbians who were persecuted or sent to concentration camps were typically placed under the Black Triangle or antisocial category, not a separate category for their sexuality (5). This has largely meant that lesbian women have been ignored in memorials commemorating Nazi victims more generally and memorials that specifically commemorated homosexual victims under the Pink Triangle.
The controversy around this topic stems from debates over how to define systematic persecution and how to establish a group’s victim status — discussions that often focus heavily on the number of people imprisoned in concentration camps or killed, as classified by Nazi categories. However, this emphasis tends to obscure the broader historical realities of the Nazi era. While it is true that in Germany there were no laws criminalizing female homosexuality, “in Austria, female homosexuality remained a criminal offence throughout all seven years of the Anschluss to the Third Reich, from 1938-45; and within the territory of the ‘Ostmark,’ as Austria was called during these years, the police and criminal courts continued to prosecute women for homosexual acts according to Austrian law” (6). It seems then, that even if women were not sent to concentration camps under a specific Lesbian category of persecution like the Pink Triangle, there was still an effort to eradicate female homosexuality, even if it manifested in different ways than male homosexuality. These discussions also often assume that the manifestation of Nazi ideology was always consistent when talking about policy versus daily realities in the empire. While looking at Nazi policies can help when discussing systematic persecution, the reality of implementations of Nazi persecution does not always match policy ideals. Discrimination of lesbians can and did happen outside of the imposition (or lack thereof) of specific targeted policies.
The role of gender here is also very important when understanding the Nazis position on lesbians. The will of Nazi Aryan racial superiority, which pushed for more women to have Aryan children, influenced how the Nazis viewed lesbian sex. In their mind “women are ‘always ready for sex,’ so that women’s same-sex sexual desires do not impede their function as breeders of the nation. Women were simply not seen as sexual agents; they were subordinate to men” (Wilke 154). Because of this, lesbian women, unlike gay men, were not seen as threats to the German nation. There have been attempts by lesbian scholars to prove the presence of systemic persecution to varying degrees of success. In the feminist magazine EMMA, there was an attempt to prove lesbian persecution and “in its attempt to measure lesbian victimhood up to a standard of gay men’s victimhood, ultimately drawing on iconic representations of Jewish victimhood,” which can pit different victim groups against each other rather than developing solidarity (152). I think that the problem is not a lack of evidence to prove the victimhood of lesbians, the problem is the narrow framework of the victim category and the highly comparative nature of this discussion. Playing victim groups off each other in this way is more damaging than useful, especially when fighting for justice and should be avoided.
The memorialization process for lesbian victims has been just as complicated. In Ravensbrück, the largest women's concentration camp, there was a long fight to try and get a permanent memorial set up to commemorate the lesbian inmates. In 1984 on International Women's Day, a group called Lesbians in the Church placed a commemorative wreath on the site only to discover that it was removed a few days later (Newsome 169). Then in 2014, a group of lesbian and feminist activists held a ceremony for lesbian victims with a memorial sphere only to have it removed after the ceremony concluded (168). In 2016, the International Advisory Board of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation rejected the bid to permanently place this memorial sphere in Ravensbrück due to the lack of proof that lesbians were persecuted by the Nazis. This was not the first bid made to permanently place the memorial within Ravensbrück, but one of a series of efforts by various lesbian groups to get lesbian victims acknowledged. The “justification” for rejection was highly influenced by the former spokesperson of the Lesbian and Gay Union of Germany and the International Advisory Board’s representative for gay victims, historian Alexander Zinn (Newsome 171). Zinn thought “that the attempts to portray lesbians as victims amounted to the creation of a ‘legend of lesbian persecution’ and a ‘falsification of history’ for the achievement of present-day political interests” (171). There was also significant pushback from gay rights organizations seeking to “protect” their status as a victim group, which they did not want lesbians endangering. I consider this to be problematic and can potentially be harmful to all victim groups by creating a space where victim denial and erasure is normalized. This creates a dangerous precedent of denial rather than protecting the status of all victim groups. What this debate shows is that “not all queers past and present were or are oriented toward progressive politics; that on matters of race, age, immigration status, and gender presentation there were and continue to be contestations over who belongs to the category of victim and hence is kin” (159 160). It was not until 2021 that the advisory board finally accepted the permanent placement of the memorial sphere at the Ravensbrück Memorial site (172).
This was not the only time in which the memorialization of lesbians was delayed due to gatekeeping by gay rights groups. When the design for the Berlin Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime was announced in 2006, the question of who the memorial was for came to the forefront of many people's criticisms. Its design depicts “a concrete structure that aesthetically cites the concrete slabs of the Holocaust Memorial but incorporates a screen and a video installation. The initial video installation was a loop of two men kissing – the same kiss, repeated over and over” (Wilke 151). Many lesbian organizations were outraged by only the inclusion of two men kissing, saying that it perpetuates lesbian erasure. Gay organizations on the other hand were outraged that lesbian groups thought that they should also be included in the memorial, despite the combined effort of gay and lesbian groups to create it (Wilke 150). It was not until after the opening of the memorial in 2008 that the creators of the monument added a video clip of two women kissing. This failure of gay and lesbian organizations (and other key stakeholders) to engage in inclusive and sustained collaboration should prompt us to reconsider previously unacknowledged privileges that may have shaped both past and present activism — such as the uncritical centering of the Pink Triangle.
Discussion
The Pink Triangle was used by gay rights movements in the 1970s to bring attention to the persecution of gay people to a wider audience. It was seemingly employed to demonstrate the existence of homophobia in society, thereby legitimizing the protests of the gay rights movement. However, a focus on the past can obscure the continuation of this discrimination by placing the suffering of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community as a historic event rather than focusing on the continuing persecution of 2SLGBTQIA+ people around the world. As previously discussed, the specific laws used to criminalize homosexuality by the Nazis continued to exist long after the fall of the Third Reich (Wilke 138). Memorials to victims make clear that they are only commemorating those persecuted under these laws during the Nazi period. While some monuments try to be vague in their descriptions to encompass more victim groups without specifically naming them or make the time frame ambiguous; the use of the Pink Triangle in the designs clears up this uncertainty by focusing on those gay men sent to concentration camps. This is not only limited to memorials that focus on the Pink Triangle iconography. ARCUS, or the Shadow of a Rainbow Memorial in Vienna that commemorates the Men and Women Victimized by the Persecution of Homosexuals in the Nazi Era, does not use the Pink Triangle in its design.[2] Yet it ignores the decades of persecution of homosexual individuals under the same laws used by the Nazis by making the memorial dedicated specifically to the victims of the Nazi Era. This also shifts the blame away from Austria, either during or after the war, despite the presence of anti homosexual laws both before and after the Nazi period. The specific wording of the name of the memorial, as with many memorials of this nature, ignores the experience of transgender, gender nonconforming individuals and other genderqueer people by using specifically “Men and Women” in the names and descriptions. The erasure of the persecution of transgender people remains an area in need of deeper academic inquiry. This paper does not address the persecution of trans people in depth. While this exclusion is not intended to minimize their experiences—or those of other members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community—it reflects the need to narrow the scope of the project. The erasure of trans people in memorialization warrants its own dedicated study, which exceeded the limits of both this paper and my current research expertise. That said, trans individuals were present and persecuted during this period, and their histories merit further scholarly attention.
I am not arguing that the gay rights movements of the past should be entirely disregarded, and the use of the Pink Triangle as a symbol of protest or memorialization be banned. The use of the Pink Triangle in the late 20th century made sense in the context of the time in West Germany when Paragraph 175 was still in place (and would be in some iteration until 1994), and homosexuals were not yet considered victims of the Nazis (Newsome 68). The use of the symbol created solidarity at a time of unrest and brought light to this forgotten history. It was a good symbol for gay rights movements of the past to use and continue to use to remind people of the suffering that homosexuals experienced at the hand of the Nazis. It simply is not applicable to be used as a universal symbol of the queer movement today as it fails to encompass the wide complexity of the 2SLGBTQIA+ movement of the 21st century.
It might feel strange or unjustified to criticize decades of work by queer activists who brought attention to the victimization of homosexuals by the Nazis in the Holocaust. However, many decades on, I think that it is fair to begin to demand more than the bare minimum of recognition and dive into the complexity which this subject demands. Criticism breeds development, and queer victims of whatever period deserve to be memorialized and remembered as respectfully and inclusively as possible. The use of the Pink Triangle in memorialization can have unintended consequences by creating boundaries on victimhood. As is the case, “memorials are dedicated to victims. As a result, they represent people solely as victims of persecution. Thus, memorials potentially reduce people to the identity markers under which they were persecuted” (Wilke 144). When creating and discussing these memorials, it is important to consider the complex factors that shape both their creation and their influence on how we interpret the past.
Conclusion
Current 2SLGBTQIA+ activism expands the idea of what it means to be queer in society today by centering diversity and difference. As previously stated, the Pink Triangle does not fit with current calls for anti-racist and feminist-centred work within queer activism as it primarily represents the gay, white, cis men who were targeted by Nazi Germany. Additionally, this leaves out the suffering of lesbian women who were also persecuted by the Nazis, but not under the Pink Triangle. The continued persecution of homosexuality after the fall of the Nazis is then ignored in their narrative. And in its generalizations, ignores the queer experiences of racial minorities in the intersection of homophobia and racism and the experience of gender nonconforming or transgender people. It is only when we centre these marginalized perspectives that real meaningful progress can happen for all. What all of this tells us is that the Pink Triangle, as a symbol of the gay rights movement, should not and cannot represent all 2SLGBTQIA+ suffering, past or present.
Notes
[1] The “Euthanasia” or Aktion T4 was the systematic murder of individuals (of all ethnicities) deemed mentally or physically disabled in German controlled territories starting in 1939. Originally targeting disabled children, and then expanded to adults in the Summer of 1939 under the secret name T4. Six gassing installations both in Germany and in German annexed territories were operational between January of 1940 and August of 1941. Even after these institutions were closed, eithinasia killings continued, claiming the lives of over 250,000 victims. Find out more at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Website (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/euthanasia-program) or the work of Karl Kessler, “Physicians and the Nazi Euthanasia Program.”
[2] “ARCUS (Shadow of a Rainbow) Memorial for Homosexuals Persecuted During the Nazi Era,” Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Wien. https://www.koer.or.at/en/projects/arcus-schatten-eines-regenbogens/ (accessed July 15, 2024).
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Jami Gisel is a recent graduate from the University of Victoria with a Bachelors of Arts Degree in History. Jami’s specific areas of inquiry focus on the history and continuation of colonization in Canada, Holocaust memorialization and queer history. This paper was written for the I-witness field school she participated in during the summer of 2024 which looked at the evolution of memorialization of the Holocaust. They are excited to start the next chapter in their academic journey by pursuing a Masters Degree in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester.
Picture: “Gedenktafel Rosa Winkel Nollendorfplatz.” 2009. Photograph by Manfred Brueckels. From Wikimedia Commons. This image is licensed under Creative Commons 3.0.
