Project Triangle - intro to the Nazi Holocaust
Channel: Open Table Network
Date: 20/01/2021

Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated on 27th January as it marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, in 1945, 76 years ago.
Among those whom the Nazis treated as less than human were people who were homosexual (that is, gay men and lesbian women). As their attraction meant they were less likely to have children, they were seen as ‘anti-social’ enemies of their idea of the master race.
They were some of the first people, alongside political prisoners, to be sent to the concentration camps in 1933. In the camps, they were subject to ridicule and hard work. It wasn’t just gay men and lesbians, but also those thought to be homosexual because they didn’t fit stereotypes of gender and sexuality the Nazis valued.
Those who were identified as gay men were forced to wear pink triangles, while lesbians were made to wear a black triangle along with other ‘anti-social’ groups. For this reason, the number of women taken to camps because of their sexual orientation is unknown.
In September 2009, I accompanied ten LGBT young people from Merseyside on a five-day cultural exchange trip to Auschwitz, Krakow and Warsaw working with a group of Polish LGBT young people.
The exchange enabled the group to understand the Holocaust and the fate of many LGBT people at that time, its impact on European and LGBT social history, as well as challenging past and present issues around hate crime.
The young people took part in making a film called Project Triangle, named after the badges gay men were made to wear to identify them in the camps. Here’s a short extract. You may find some of these images upsetting.
Project Triangle documentary by Light Factory. Watch the full documentary here: http://www.light-factory.co.uk/portfolio/project-triangle/
Our Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration service will be published as a YouTube Premiere on this channel on Sunday 24th January 2021 at 6.30pm GMT. The video will include British Sign Language interpretation and captions to make it more accessible, thanks to Tom Pearson: https://tombsl.com/.
Join us live online, or later at your leisure, on our YouTube channel. Subscribe to receive a notification when it’s published.