Based on a play by Martin Sherman, the film describes the drama of homosexuals at the height of Nazism in Germany. Max and Rudi are lovers and they try to escape the persecution of Hitler by moving away inland in search of the assistance of friends and relatives. It is not long, however, before they are imprisoned and taken to a concentration camp. In the train transporting them to prison, they are tortured by the guards, and Rudi is assassinated. Max, desperate, finds comfort in the arms of Horst, a prisoner with the pink triangle on his clothes, indicating his condition of homosexual. Initially, Max tries to hide that he is homosexual (prisoners who revealed they were gay were massacred by the guards and by the prison inmates), and wears the yellow triangle on his breast (to mark the fact he was Jewish). Little by little, he becomes politically aware and begins to wear the pink triangle on his chest as a result of the ever stronger relationship with Horst.