This Holocaust Remembrance Day (HMD) marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp in Nazi Germany.  Under the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s theme for this year of ‘For a Better Future’, it’s an opportunity for people to come together, learn from and about the past, and take action to never forget the lessons of this terrible moment in history, to make an inclusive future for all.  At LEAGUE we remember the victims and survivors within the LGBTQ+ community, especially more than 100,000 gay men whose isolation, targeting, persecution and imprisonment began well before the outbreak of the Second World War from the moment the Nazi party came to power.  

The pink triangle icon has its roots in the symbol gay men were required to wear as the Nazi regime divided and then persecuted the community.  Click here to read about reclaiming the pink triangle in the 70s and 80s as a powerful symbol against oppression.

To hear two voices of survivors please seek out the memoirs of Pierre Seel, who wrote about his harrowing experiences, and Gad Beck, speaking in the Shoah Foundation library.