The Pink Triangle Park is a triangle-shaped mini-park located in the Castro District of San Francisco, California. The park is less than 4,000 square feet (370 m2) and faces Market Street with 17th Street to its back. The park sits directly above the Castro Street Station of Muni Metro, across from Harvey Milk Plaza. It is the first permanent, free-standing memorial in America dedicated to the thousands of persecuted homosexuals in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust of World War II.[1]

Pink Triangle Park
Map
LocationCastro District, San Francisco, U.S.
Open2003
Pink Triangle Park and Holocaust Monument
Park layout
Information board

Fifteen triangular granite pylons, or columns, are dedicated to the thousands of homosexual, bisexual, and transgender victims that were killed during Hitler's Nazi regime.[a] In the center of the park is a loose rock-filled triangle that includes rose crystals. Visitors are encouraged to take a crystal as part of the memorial experience. The triangle theme recalls the Nazis forcing homosexual men to wear pink triangles sewn to their clothes as an identifier and badge of shame. The Pink Triangle Park was dedicated on the United Nations Human Rights Day, December 10, 2001,[3] by the Eureka Valley Promotion Association.[4] According to the non-profit that maintains the space, the Pink Triangle Park serves as "a physical reminder of how the persecution of any individual or single group of people damages all humanity."[5] The Castro serves as an LGBT neighborhood for the San Francisco and Bay Areas communities, as well as a tourist destination for its part in modern LGBT history.

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References

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Notes

  1. ^ According to Gottfried Lorenz, assuming a death rate of between 53 and 60 percent, at least 3,100 to 3,600 men died in the Nazi concentration camps.[2]

Sources

  1. ^ News Briefs: Juice shop opening to benefit LGBT memorial
  2. ^ Lorenz, Gottfried (2018). Todesurteile und Hinrichtungen wegen homosexueller Handlungen während der NS-Zeit: Mann-männliche Internetprostitution. Und andere Texte zur Geschichte und zur Situation der Homosexuellen in Deutschland [Death sentences and executions for homosexual acts during the Nazi era, male-male internet prostitution, and other texts on the history and situation of homosexuals in Germany] (in German). LIT Verlag. p. 11. ISBN 978-3-643-13992-4.
  3. ^ Plaque which is part of the monument.
  4. ^ "Park honors gay, lesbian Holocaust victims, San Francisco Chronicle June 27, 2003". Sfgate.com. 2003-06-27. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
  5. ^ Pink Triangle Park website, maintained by the Castro/Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association (EVNA)
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37°45′44″N 122°26′10″W / 37.76222°N 122.43611°W / 37.76222; -122.43611