UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Jake Newsome, doctorate, award-winning scholar of German and LGBTQ+ history and author of “Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust” will present “Pink Triangle Legacies: Holocaust Memories and Modern Gay Identity,” an online course for OLLI at Penn State, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Oct. 25.
Newsome said he grew up in a rural community where the only information he received about being gay he heard in church on Sundays.
“We were told that being gay was wrong and it was a choice. This did not resonate with how I felt about myself and my own experiences,” Newsome said. “Being gay was not a choice, it is who I am.”
Newsome said he found community in a book in his college library about being gay in the southern United States. It was a collection of stories told by people in the LGBTQ+ community.
“For the first time I was reading a book where people were talking about their own life experiences and not reading a book depicting their life experience as wrong, or having it labeled as a medical condition. It gave me the confidence to come out and to be who I am,” Newsome said. “I wanted to give someone else that sense of community with my book. ‘The Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming out in the Shadow of the Holocaust’ addresses the atrocities of history, but it also discusses the resiliency of the people who stood in it.”
In Germany, from 1933 to 1945 the Nazis used triangles as part of a classification system for prisoners of concentration camps. Pink was the color of the triangles given to prisoners who were a part of the LBGTQ+ community. In the 1970’s, the LGBTQ+ community once again wore the pink triangle as a symbol, but this time as a symbol of pride.
“While over the past few decades, the LGBTQ+ community had begun to be more accepted, it was understood to be only in silence, and only out of sight,” Newsome said. “I am awestruck at the courage it took for the first person who took back the pink triangle as a symbol of pride. This act was ripping the closet door off the hinges. This person was saying that every person in a democracy, not just the majority, but every person has a right to be who they are within it.”
Newsome said with his book he wants to create awareness of what happens in a democracy when people are forced back into silence through shame or violence.
“Berlin was once the gay capital of the world; Germany was a democracy that thought it could protect itself,” Newsome said. “While a national commitment to the LGBTQ+ community is a step forward, it takes each person in a community to have a voice and protect it, to be accountable to ourselves and each other, and to build a community. One person cannot do it alone. I encourage everyone to meet people within the LGBTQ+ community and other community groups acting for inclusion. Talk to them, volunteer.”
To learn more, register here for the online course. Tuition is $15 for OLLI members, $30 for nonmembers.
OLLI at Penn State is a service of Penn State Outreach and offers community members aged 50 or better the opportunity to learn, explore and connect through educational experiences, travel, social and volunteer opportunities. For more information about OLLI at Penn State contact olli@psu.edu or call 814-867-4278.