In working on the project, Carney realized how many people were unaware of the symbol's use in Nazi Germany. Just a few weeks later the Pink Triangle of Twin Peaks was born." "We noticed a huge blank canvas right outside the window: Twin Peaks.
"My friends and I were sitting in a restaurant on Market Street, wondering how we could spread the weekend's festivities to other parts of the city," recalls Carney, an architect and San Francisco resident of 35 years. Carney tells Hoodline that the triangle started as an attempt to add a little extra color-pink, it turned out-to the 1996 Pride Parade. The triangle was founded by Thomas Tremblay, Michael Brown, and Patrick Carney. For every Pride since 1996, the Pink Triangle has appeared as if by magic to overlook the celebration juxtaposed against the weekend's revelry, some may not know that the symbol-200 feet across and visible from over 20 miles away-was used to label homosexual prisoners under Nazi Germany before becoming a mark of local LGBTQ pride. New York: Henry Holt, 1986.Pride weekend, held this year on June 27-28, will mark the 20th Pink Triangle installation on Twin Peaks. The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals. "The Pink Triangle and Political Consciousness: Gays, Lesbians, and the Memory of Nazi Persecution." Journal of the History of Sexuality 11 (January/April 2002): 319-49. Men with the Pink Triangle: The True, Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps. Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany 1933-45. Once a hallmark of Hitler’s cruelty and madness, the Pink Triangle is now both a universal symbol of LGBTQ Pride and an international declaration of “NEVER AGAIN!” The Pink Triangle was adopted by the modern LGBTQ Rights Movement in the 1970s and became emblematic of life and death during the 1980s and 90s when the male homosexual population once again faced mass death – this time by AIDS and the judgmental indifference that condemned them to a “deserved” fate. The German government did not recognize or grant reparations to gay survivors of Nazism until 2002, by which time almost all had died. No community of survivors with which to share their stories. For decades, most of these men were unable to relate the saga of their torture at the hands of the Nazis for fear of outing themselves to a hostile society. and Europe, meant that many gay survivors of Nazism faced continued persecution, arrest, and detention long after Hitler was defeated. The enforcement of anti-homosexuality laws across the U.S. While great effort was made to repatriate most victims of Nazi brutality, the homosexual survivors were not “liberated.” At the recommendation of British and American lawyers, the men who had been arrested under Germany’s anti-homosexual ‘Paragraph 175’ statute – identified by the pink triangles many were forced to wear – were to be re-imprisoned. At the conclusion of World War II, the Allies came upon Nazi concentration camps and other sites of atrocity to find thousands upon thousands of people – suffering terribly, emaciated, near death – whom the SS had incarcerated because they were Jewish, Roma or Sinti, dissenting Lutheran and Catholic Clergy, mentally or physically disabled, homosexuals, political dissidents… the list of groups which offended Adolf Hitler was a long one. Pierre Seel, from "I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror"īefore the Nazi era, Berlin had been home to a vibrant gay and lesbian culture. As for myself, after decades of silence I have made up my mind to speak, to accuse, to bear witness.” But I suspect that some people prefer to remain silent forever, afraid to stir up memories, like that one among so many others. Why are they still silent today? Have they all died? It’s true that we were among the youngest in the camp and that a lot of time has gone by. I will never forget the barbaric murder of my love – before my very eyes, before our eyes, for there were hundreds of witnesses. For fifty years now that scene has kept ceaselessly passing and re-passing through my mind. “Since then I sometimes wake up howling in the middle of the night.