May 13, 2013
Branded by the Pink Triangle, a non-fiction book written primarily for a teen audience, tells the often forgotten story of the homosexual men who were persecuted by the Nazis. The book begins with the thriving gay culture in Berlin but then follows the rise of the Nazis and their solution of ‘extermination through work’ which they developed to rid Germany of homosexuals. Through historical facts and the personal stories of a few men the history of the men branded by the pink triangle reveals a tragic story, made more tragic by the indifference to their suffering for decades after the war. One of the men whose inspiring story is told is Gad Beck, a Jewish homosexual. This book highlights both the persecution of gay men during the Nazi regime and the difficulties suffered by those same men and other gays until very recent times.