Migrating Memories: Transatlantic Commemoration of the Nazis’ Homosexual Victims in West Germany and the United States

In 1973, members of the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin, a gay rights organization in West Berlin, voted to adopt the pink triangle as the group’s symbol.  In doing so, they became the first organization in the world to use the pink triangle, the badge worn by homosexual inmates in Nazi concentration camps, as a symbol of gay rights activism.  By the next year, gay activists in New York, Miami, and San Francisco donned the historical insignia in demonstrations advocating for equal rights.  By the end of the decade, the pink triangle had become the most important symbol of the international gay rights movement. But American activists not only adopted a political emblem from their German counterparts; they also adopted a chapter of German history as their own.  I argue that the pink triangle – as a political symbol and a collection of memories – was fundamental in establishing a gay identity and history that transcended national boundaries and contributed to the formation of gays and lesbians as an international political minority that had been victimized throughout history, culminating in what some even called the “Homocaust” under the Nazis.

This presentation will also explore how memorials helped shape collective memories of Nazi persecution on both sides of the Atlantic.  The decade long debate surrounding the installment of a pink triangle monument at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site highlights not only the bitter opposition gay activists faced, but also the support coming from activists abroad. American examples, such as the annual Pink Triangle Commemoration Ceremony in San Francisco and the development of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s permanent travelling exhibit on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, will shed light on the Americanization of these memories and reveal the centrality of the pink triangle history in the American gay movement.