purple triangle

English

a purple triangle

Etymology

From the symbol worn by Jehovah's Witnesses at Nazi concentration camps.

Noun

purple triangle (plural purple triangles)

1. (historical, rare) A Jehovah's Witness in Nazi Germany.
   • 2004, M. James Penton, quoting Jolene Chu, “Purple Triangles: A Story of Spiritual Resistance”, in Judaism Today, Spring 1999, issue 12, →ISSN, pages 15–19, quoted in “Evaluating the Arguments and the Evidence”, in Jehovah's Witnesses and the Third Reich: Sectarian Politics Under Persecution, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, →ISBN, page 88:

     Survivor Max Liebster recalls that the SS there isolated the Witnesses and declared their barracks off limits to other prisoners. In Melk, Polish survivor Joseph Kempler says he saw ‘a camp within a camp’ and was told that the SS kept the ‘purple triangles’ in it, dangerous prisoners because they taught the Bible.

   • 2013 November 13, April Voytko Kempler, The Altered I: Memoir of Holocaust Survivor Joseph Kempler, LeRue Press (LRP), →ISBN, page 211:

     I could tell it was a purple triangle coming down the camp street even before I saw the color of their triangle. They walked differently. The Jews and other prisoners shambled along, scuffling their feet, eyes downcast.

Related terms

• pink triangle
• yellow star