Okay, everybody knows that the Nazis forced Jewish people wear yellow stars-of-David and that gays had to wear pink triangles. My question: were Gypsies (Romany), handicapped folks and political prisoners also forced to wear symbols and if so, what?
just curious,
TD
I’ve seen a chart of these symbols somewhere. Yes, everyone wore some sort of symbol, and for everyone but the Jewish prisoners it was a triangle. Pink for gay men, black for “sex criminals” (which included lesbians), red for communists, and so on. I don’t remember them all.
I’m not sure if the Romany people had a specific colour triangle. There was quite a complicated system of symbols (not surprising, given the Nazi love of uniforms and insignia for everyone, from tram conductors, to the unfortunates in the camps). Here’s a link which shows what is apparently an original poster from a KZ. I note that the caption says that Jehovah’s Witnesses had their own colour.
There appear to be further symbols for prisoners who worked in the camps (Kapo, etc.)
I was quite careful when choosing the page to link–you turn up a great deal of disinformation and hatred when you search for info on the holocaust on the web. Some very sad and crazy people out there…
Rodd Hill: By way of information, is it possible for you to list the column and row headings in the diagram? I can’t make them out sufficiently to read them. Thanks.
This site has the same chart that you can see at Rodd Hill’s link, but there is a legend explaining the various colours.
JCHeckler: I’ve been trying to find a better image of the poster, either with greater resolution or simply a larger size: so far, no luck. It doesn’t help matters that the typeface used is the old “fractur,” which is difficult enough for a non-German speaker at the best of times! I’ll keep looking.
To refer back to the OP, I should have clarified that AFAIK, the Jews were the only group forced to wear distinguishing insignia before arrival in a concentration camp. I have seen yellow stars with the word “Jew” in French, Polish, and German. The coloured triangles were, I believe, not worn by other groups (homosexuals, 7th Day Adventists, political prisoners, etc.) until actually in a concentration camp.
(Just previewed–thanks Arnold.)
YES, I have a book written by a Polish guy who survived the war and was a camp prisoner, I will get the book and try to find the symbols.
And, of course, it wasn’t just symbols that were used for identity purposes once people were in the camps.
First time I saw this was on an elderly man serving at a gift shop on a Greek Island, think i was about 9 years old. Didn’t put two and two together so I pointed at the tattood number on his lower arm and asked “Whats that ?”. He said “Auschwitz”. Gulp - all those war films that kids love to watch suddenly had a context
I saw those posters (or very similar ones) at the Holocaust Museum. You may want to poke around their website and see what you can find.
One of my aunt’s dearest friends is a Holocaust survivor. I met him a couple summers ago. Before he came by, I asked my aunt if he had a number on his arm, and she said yes. I was soooo embarassed when she asked him to show it to me, but he was VERY cool about it, and very talkative. (He’s such a nice guy!)
It was my understanding that there were 6 inverted-triangle symbols. My friend M. likes to joke that he would have gotten all 6 triangles (he’s a gay apostate-Jewish Gypsy socialist who’s committed a crime and been in a mental hospital). He quips that he wouldn’t have died in the Holocaust because they would have spent the whole war pinning triangles on him. (He’s a Scorpio rising. He’s allowed to joke like that.)
When I visited Matthausen KZ there was a very complicated badge chart, and I remember that there was a specific Romany badge (I didn’t previously know the German word Zigeuner and it stuck in my head particularly).
One thing in the Rodd Hill Posted chart that I found interesting: “. The vertical categories begin with the basic colors, and then show those for repeat offenders…”. Repeat offenders? They didn’t parole people from those hell-holes, did they? I thought once you went in, you didn’t go out alive.