The prisoners with a pink triangle identified themselves as gay (sometimes they were married to women, and engaged in very few, if any, homosexual acts). Not everyone convicted under Paragraph 175 was sent to a concentration camp; in fact, most were sent to ordinary jails. Most gay men who suffered and died in concentration camps actually wore the yellow star (because they were both Gay and Jewish).

While the number of homosexuals in concentration camps is hard to estimate, Richard Plant gives a rough estimate of the number of men convicted for homosexuality "between 1933 to 1944 at between 50,000 and 63,000."

Pink triangle prisoner Erwin Schimitzek, interned in Auschwitz in 1941, died in 1942.

After the camps were liberated at the end of the Second World War, many of the pink triangle prisoners were often simply re-imprisoned by the Allied-instated Federal Republic of Germany. An openly gay man named Heinz Dцrmer, for instance, served 20 years in total both in a concentration camp and then in the jails of the new Republic. In fact, the amendments to Paragraph 175, which turned homosexuality from a minor offense into a felony, remained intact after the war for a further 24 years. While suits seeking monetary compensation have failed, in 2002 the German government released an official apology to the gay community.

Today, fewer than ten of those imprisoned for homosexuality are known to be still living. In 2000, the documentary film Paragraph 175 recorded some of their testimonies. The pink triangle is the basis of the design of the Homomonument in Amsterdam. The pink triangle, now a gay pride and gay rights symbol.

Paragraph 175 was adopted in 1871. Beginning in the 1890s, sexual reformers fought against the "disgraceful paragraph," and soon won the support of August Bebel, head of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). But a petition in the Reichstag to abolish Paragraph 175 foundered in 1898. In 1929, a Reichstag Committee decided to repeal Paragraph 175 with the votes of the Social Democrats, the Communist Party (KPD) and the German Democratic Party (DDP); however, the rise of the Party prevented the implementation of the repeal. Although modified at various times, the paragraph remained part of German law until 1994.

In 1935, the s broadened the law so that the courts could pursue any "lewd act" whatsoever, even one involving no physical contact, such as masturbating next to each other. Convictions multiplied by a factor of ten to about 8,000 per year. Furthermore, the Gestapo could transport suspected offenders to concentration camps without any legal justification at all (even if they had been acquitted or already served their sentence in jail). Thus, between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexual men were forced into concentration camps, where they were identified by the pink triangle. The majority of them died there.

While the persecution of homosexuals is reasonably well-known today, far less attention had been given to the continuation of this persecution in post-war Germany. In 1945, when concentration camps were liberated, homosexual prisoners were not freed but were instead made to serve out their sentence under Paragraph 175. In 1950, East Germany abolished amendments to Paragraph 175, whereas West Germany kept them and even had them confirmed by its Constitutional Court. About 100,000 men were implicated in legal proceedings from 1945 to 1969, and about 50,000 were convicted (if they had not committed suicide before, as many did). In 1969, the government eased Paragraph 175 to an age of consent of 21. It was lowered to 18 in 1973, and finally repealed in 1994. East Germany had already reformed its more lenient version of the paragraph in 1968, and repealed it in 1988.

*from wikipedia.org