Since 1984, memorials to homosexual victims of the Nazi regime have appeared in various cities and memorial sites at former concentration camps. Mauthausen concentration camp (Austria) got the first monument acknowledging gay prisoners in 1984.
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial Project was founded by a group of community activists. Over the years they raised funds and decided, with South Sydney City Council, on the site at Green Park in Darlinghurst, in Sydney, Australia. Darlinghurst is considered the heart of Sydney's gay and lesbian population. Green Park is adjacent to the Sydney Jewish Museum, which ensures that the memorial retains its historic meaning.
The $100,000 structure is the brainchild of child Holocaust survivor Dr. Kitty Fischer, who says she owes her life to a homosexual inmate at the Auschwitz death camp who brought jacket potatoes to her and her younger sister. The memorial was constructed over a period of months in 2000. Its dedication ceremony occurred on Tuesday, 27 February 2001, when the memorial was handed over to the custodianship of the Sydney Pride Centre.
The memorial comprises a pink triangle bearing an image of prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and a black triangle representing victimized lesbians.
But Jewish academics have criticized the memorial for equating the Holocaust with homosexual persecution. Professor Colin Tatz: "Homosexuals certainly were not the target of annihilation in the manner that Jews were... People have to be careful of jumping on the coat-tails of one group's suffering and appropriating it for their own."
Sydney University adjunct professor Konrad Kwiet said he supported a memorial but had reservations about drawing too strong a parallel between the Holocaust - which specifically refers to the attempted extermination of the Jewish people - and the persecution of homosexuals, which did not amount to genocide.
Gay Jewish lawyer Robert Green disagreed, saying it was gratifying to see a memorial which showed no-one had a monopoly on suffering. "Kitty Fischer was in Auschwitz with a gay man who was not Jewish, so different policies led to the same end."
The Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial occupies Stonewall Gardens, a triangular platform in Green Park, facing Darlinghurst Road.
This beautiful iconic memorial draws from the symbols originating in the Holocaust. The pink triangle, used to identify male homosexual prisoners in Nazi Germany, is transformed into a glowing pink triangular prism. The black triangle, the symbol used to identify lesbian women appears here, translated into a triangular grid of black steel columns intersecting the prism. The two triangles appear as a fractured Star of David.
The black columns stand as sentinels; symbols of individual resilience and strength. The crystalline pink prism with its text of, and archival image from, the Holocaust reinforces the need for that strength. During the day, the glass surface reflects its surroundings, the past and the present becoming one. At night, the image glows softly, a symbol of hope and the life within and beyond.