Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Via AmericaBlog.gay: Never Again: Yom HaShoah and the Rosa Winkle

Never Again: Yom HaShoah and the Rosa Winkle


"Yom Hashoah" is Hebrew for Holocaust Remembrance Day. It falls on today, May 2nd, this year:
The internationally recognized date comes from the Hebrew calendar and corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan on that calendar. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In Hebrew, Holocaust Remembrance Day is called Yom Hashoah. When the actual date of Yom Hashoah falls on a Friday, the state of Israel observes Yom Hashoah on the preceding Thursday. When it falls on a Sunday, Yom Hashoah is observed on the following Monday.
Of course, along with Jews, homosexuals were also considered the enemy of fascist Nazi Germany and were made to wear the "Rosa Winkle" or "Pink Triangle" in German.
The pink triangle (German: Rosa Winkel) was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify male prisoners who were sent there because of their homosexuality.[1] Every prisoner had to wear a downward-pointing triangle on his or her jacket, the colour of which was to categorise him or her by "kind". Other colors identified Jews (two triangles superimposed as a yellow star), political prisoners, Jehovah's Witnesses, "anti-social" prisoners, and others the Nazis deemed undesirable. Pink and yellow triangles could be combined if a prisoner was deemed to be gay and Jewish (see German concentration camp chart of prisoner markings image).





Originally intended as a badge of shame, the pink triangle (often inverted from its Nazi usage) has been reclaimed as an international symbol of gay pride and the gay rights movement, and is second in popularity only to the rainbow flag.[2]
May we never cease to honor our victims and vow NEVER AGAIN and to NEVER FORGET.

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