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OVERLAPPING
TRIANGLES
               THEMES & GOALS

Overlapping Triangles brings to light hidden histories
of the Roma, Jewish, disabled, homosexual, political,
and many other victims of the Nazi regime.
Overlapping Triangles 
is a collection of educational content,
activities, exhibitions, and interactive stories for classrooms and communities,
​as well as materials for teachers and informal educators.

On this page:
THE VICTIMS & TARGETS OF NAZISM
EDUCATIONAL GOALS
HISTORICAL OBJECTIVES
​SILENCING​

THE VICTIMS & TARGETS OF NAZISM
Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime and its collaborators persecuted - for distinct reasons and in distinct ways - many groups of people, including*: people of African descent; alcoholics; people of so-called Asiatic descent; dissenting clergy (Catholic, Lutheran and others); criminals and perceived criminals; Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, and political dissidents; people with mental and physical disabilities, including children and adults with severe physical defects, people with mental retardation, people with hereditary deafness, hereditary blindness, schizophrenia, epilepsy, so-called manic-depressive disorder, or other real and perceived disabilities; emigrants and foreign forced laborers; Freemasons; people experiencing homelessness; so-called "intellectuals"; Jehovah's Witnesses; people of Jewish descent; lesbians and male homosexuals (and perceived homosexuals); pacifists; people of Polish descent; so-called "prostitutes"; people of Sinti or Roma descent, as well as other so-called "Gypsies;" people of Slavic descent; Soviet prisoners of war; trade unionists; women; and so-called "useless eaters," including some geriatrics, bombing victims, and injured German soldiers.

​*This list is not exhaustive.
​
PRISONER CLASSIFICATION IN NAZI CAMPS
View a chart of prisoner markings used in some German concentration camps. Dachau, Germany, ca. 1938-1942 (KZ Gedenkstaette Dachau). View Artifact on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

EDUCATIONAL GOALS
Overlapping Triangles helps educators and learners to achieve the following goals:
HISTORICAL GOALS (also see "historical objectives," below)
1. Learners will explain how and why the Nazi regime persecuted each of their victim groups and explain the differences and commonalities between each victim narrative.
2. Learners will explain how the narratives of different victim groups connected, intersected, and overlapped, including how the Nazi regime placed some individuals into multiple victim categories.
3. Learners will identify how and why many of the communities persecuted under Nazism continue to face government-led discrimination and violence today.
CONCEPTUAL GOALS
4. Learners will explain social taboos and identify the different factors that contribute to the marginalization and silencing of particular atrocities.
5. Learners will analyze the relationships between different forms of prejudice and oppression, as well as how they connect to bystanderism and activism.
META-COGNITIVE GOALS (learners’ knowledge of self)
6. Learners will identify key aspects of their own identities and how their affiliations to different communities are connected.
7. Learners will explore specific taboos and hidden narratives of social justice and human rights in their own communities.
8. Learners will identify their own prejudices and articulate actions they can take to stand up against ongoing prejudice and oppression.

​HISTORICAL OBJECTIVES
Overlapping Triangles supports learners in exploring the following historical content:
a. NAZI OBJECTIVES
While an objective of the Nazi regime was to wipe out the Jewish people and Jewish culture across Europe, the Nazis’ broader intention was to perpetuate their so-called master Aryan race by eliminating all persons they perceived as a threat to its advancement.

b. NAZI POLICY & ACTION
The Nazis’ beliefs and policies pertaining to specific communities and people were built on enduring forms of prejudice in Germany and across Europe. These prejudices led the Nazi regime and its collaborators to perpetrate specific forms of persecution and genocide.

c. INTERDEPENDENCY OF VICTIMHOODS
The narratives of the Nazis’ victims are interdependent. For example, the Nazis’ gassing of the disabled, as well as their use of Zyklon B to murder Soviet Prisoners of War, became a testing ground for the efficient mass-murder by gas of the Jews, Roma and Sinti that followed.

d. VICTIM EXPERIENCES
Jewish, Roma, disabled, homosexual, political and many other victim experiences overlapped and intersected in important ways. For example, different target communities shared the same ghettos, the same concentration camps, the same gas chambers and the same mass graves.

e. OVERLAPPING TRIANGLES
The Nazis used overlapping triangles, and other methods of sorting, to categorize some individuals under multiple groups. For example, in some concentration camps, some men whom the Nazis identified as both Jewish and homosexual were forced to wear a pink triangle over a yellow triangle, to form a pink and yellow star.


f. VICTIM IDENTITIES
Although the Nazis targeted particular groups of people for specific reasons and in particular ways, the identity of each individual was much more complex than the Nazis’ categorizations supposed.


g. INTERNATIONAL BYSTANDERISM
The international community did not do enough to help the targets of the Nazi regime. When we question how and why the world did little to help the different victims of Nazism, we are able to consider the broader implications of international bystanderism toward different minority groups, in the past and today.

h. ONGOING PERSECUTION
Many of the communities persecuted under Nazism continue to face government-led discrimination and violence today. Many of these ongoing oppressions can be traced back directly to the Nazis' persecution of these communities.   

SILENCING
Why and how do we forget some histories?
​

A number of factors - some visible, some invisible - have led to
​the exclusion and marginalization of some Holocaust victim narratives:

​
INSTITUTIONAL SILENCING
Denial of Rights & Criminalization
Genocide Denial
The Destruction & Concealment of Evidence
Intentional Distortion of History
Denial of Reparations
Denied & Delayed Recognition of Victimhood
Exclusion from Commemoration
Exclusion from Education
Continued Persecution

CULTURAL SILENCING
Taboos
Collective Forgetting
​Limited Advocacy & Political Capital
Limited Cultural Representations
Competitive Victimhood

PERSONAL SILENCING
Prejudice
Shame & Psychological Suppression

Intergenerational Trauma
​Apathy


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​
  • ABOUT
    • 10 YEAR REPORT
    • WHAT WE DO
    • OUR VALUES >
      • FRAMEWORK
      • GUIDING PRINCIPLES
      • HUMAN RIGHTS
    • OUR PEOPLE
    • CONTACT US
  • EXPERIENCES
    • INTERACTIVE FEATURES >
      • THE SISTERHOOD
      • OXYGEN
      • TOMORROW
      • THE 19TH WINDOW
      • HIDDEN PAGES
      • I SAW EVERYTHING
      • THE SON
      • IN OTHER PEOPLE'S HANDS
      • SECRETS
    • OVERLAPPING TRIANGLES
    • POETRY & STORIES >
      • I BELIEVE YOU
      • FAIRY TALE
      • BEDTIME STORIES
      • THE 'S' WORD
      • BRIAN
      • INTO MY ARMS
      • HAND HOLDING
      • SOUNDLESS ROAR
      • GHOSTS OF AUSCHWITZ
      • SOMETHING MISSING AT TREBLINKA
      • NEVER HEARD
      • TRAIN
    • SHAMELESS
    • VOICES
    • EDUCATION RESOURCES >
      • THE 19TH WINDOW GUIDE
      • HIDDEN PAGES GUIDE
      • I SAW EVERYTHING GUIDE
      • THE SON GUIDE
      • TRAIN READERS GUIDE
      • TOMORROW GUIDE
      • HAND HOLDING GUIDE
  • COMMUNITY
    • PROGRAM CALENDAR
    • PROGRAM INQUIRIES
    • HELP & SUPPORT
  • SIGN UP
  • DONATE