Newsome explores the Pink Triangle and LGBTQ+ history
Jake Newsome discusses his book and history of LGBTQ+ in keynote.
The 35th annual Peace Studies Conference explored LGBTQ+ history with Jake Newsome, author of “Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust,” delivering the keynote address of the conference. The annual Peace Studies Conference seeks to educate the CSB+SJU community on issues related to peace, conflict and justice.
During his evening discussion on Tuesday, Newsome outlined his research on the transformation of the pink triangle symbol, which began as a Nazi concentration camp badge, to its contemporary use as a symbol for LGBTQ+ activism and pride.
In her opening remarks, Kelly Kraemer of the peace studies department, shared that this is likely the first time the LGBTQ+ community has been the focus of the CSB+SJU conference despite its 35-year history. Kraemer met Newsome at an academic conference in 2016 when Newsome was still a Ph.D. student and had worked to bring him to campus for many years.
Newsome began the event by sharing the process that led him to study the LGBTQ+ history of the Holocaust and the legacy of the pink triangle. In his final semester of college, Newsome attended a guest lecture where he learned about the experiences of gay men in the Holocaust, which coincided with Newsome’s own recognition and understanding of his identity as a gay man.
In conversations with his professors, Newsome learned that LGBTQ+ victims and survivors of the Holocaust were a forgotten victim group because discussion of the LGBTQ+ community was taboo. While in graduate school Newsome traveled to Holocaust archives in Germany and was shocked to find mountains of information about the LGBTQ+ community and the Holocaust. From these experiences, Newsome explained that he was inspired to seek out a greater understanding of the legacy of the pink triangle and the impacts of censoring certain group’s histories.
In the next portion of Newsome’s presentation, he explained how Nazis targeted queer people and detailed the treatment of gay men in Nazi concentration camps. Newsome explained that the Nazis banned LGBTQ+ media, increased homophobic rhetoric and burned books and research materials from the institute for sexual science, which was an early LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. Newsome pointed out that because of fascism, many citizens of Nazi Germany felt empowered to act out on aggression they felt toward members of the LGBTQ+ community, typically by turning their neighbors or coworkers into the police.
In concentration camps, Nazis distinguished gay men from other people by sewing pink triangle badges onto their clothes. Newsome said gay men were subjected to particularly harsh work conditions and medical experiments within concentration camps attempting to make them more masculine. This early method of conversion therapy killed two-thirds of gay men in concentration camps.
Next, Newsome detailed how homophobic and transphobic rhetoric harmed queer holocaust survivors even after WWII ended. In his research, Newsome found that paragraph 175, the Nazi law used to criminalize LGBTQ+ people, remained a law in West Germany for decades after WWII ended. Newsome said that, not only did this law show that Germans at that time agreed with what Nazis believed about the LGBTQ+ community, but it also made it nearly impossible for queer survivors of the Holocaust to share their stories and receive reparations.
Newsome then explained how the pink triangle was reclaimed by LGBTQ+ activists in the 1970s as a resistance and pride symbol. West German LGBTQ+ activists were concerned with queer people being able to live their authentic lives in public and not having to hide their sexuality or gender identities, so they used the pink triangle to signify that they were out and proud of their identities. The pink triangle quickly spread among LGBTQ+ activists and became known as a symbol for queer resistance and pride, especially among activists in the United States.
Newsome concluded the evening by sharing three ways to combat homophobia and transphobia:
It’s important to share LGBTQ+ history with everyone, not just members of the LGBTQ+ community.
People need to act when they encounter homophobia or transphobia.
People need to show up for each other and that fighting for LGBTQ+ rights is an intersectional endeavor.
