Educating about Genocide: Remembering the Pink Triangle Prisoners of Sachsenhausen

An event to mark Holocaust Memorial Day

Presented by Dr Max Biddulph, Associate Professor, School of Education

Our starting point in this lecture is the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2020 ‘Standing together’’ which encourages audiences to reflect on the costs of living in a divided society and how the enforced loss of a safe place to call ‘home’ is part of the trauma faced by anyone experiencing persecution and genocide. Following their arrest and interrogation, individuals accused of breaking paragraph 175 of the German penal code which criminalised homosexuality, were dispatched to concentration camps. These camps instigated by the Nazi regime of the Third Reich, were distributed both within and outside the borders of Germany and the strategy of ‘concentrating’ individuals in one place who did not conform to the concept of Aryanism can be traced back to the mid-1930s. The camp at Sachsenhausen near Oranienburg on the north flank of Berlin was constructed in 1936 and accommodated a range of political prisoners and ‘anti-socials’, including ‘175ers’, who were required to have a large pink triangle sewn on to their prisoner clothing, a symbol that singled them out for particularly brutal treatment.

In addition to exploring the narratives of these gay men/bisexual men, the lecture will consider the ways in which homosexuality is seen both in pre and post war Germany. The final part of the lecture will consider the scope and process of teaching and learning from material located in the period 1933-45. This necessarily involves a consideration of pedagogies as well as themes that still resonate with the present day. Please note that the content contains potentially distressing and sexualized information.

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