Decoding the Badges of Auschwitz

In Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, prisoners were classified and identified by a system of colored patches and badges sewn onto their clothing. These symbols indicated the reason for their internment and their social status. Here are the main symbols used:

1. Red Triangle: Political prisoners, including communists, socialists, and other political dissidents.

2. Green Triangle: Criminals, including those convicted of non-political crimes.

3. Yellow Star (David Star): Jews. This symbol was also used in the wider context of Nazi Germany to identify Jewish individuals.

4. Blue Triangle: Emigrants or foreign workers who were considered undesirable.

5. Brown Triangle: Roma (Gypsies).

6. Black Triangle: Asocial individuals, including homeless people, prostitutes, and others deemed socially undesirable.

7. Pink Triangle: Homosexual men.

8. Purple Triangle: Jehovah's Witnesses and other religious dissenters.

Each badge served as a form of dehumanization, marking individuals for discrimination, mistreatment, and often death. This classification system was part of the broader framework of oppression and violence that characterized the Holocaust and the operation of concentration camps.