Badge, lapel badge

The pink triangle emblem is a reference to the cloth badges that gay prisoners were forced to wear on their uniforms in Nazi concentration camps. Thousands of gay people were persecuted by the Nazi regime and many perished in the Holocaust at death camps such as Auschwitz.

After World War II, the West German gay rights movement used the symbol in their campaign for compensation from the government. In Britain when the gay liberation movement emerged in the 1970s, activists adopted the symbol to represent both persecution and resistance to prejudice. Lapel badges like this one are now often worn as symbols of gay and lesbian pride.