Rudolf Brazda

Rudolf Brazda (26 June 1913 – 3 August 2011) was the last known concentration camp survivor deported by Nazi Germany on charges of homosexuality.

Brazda spent nearly three years at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where his prisoner uniform was branded with the distinctive pink triangle that the Nazis used to mark men interned as homosexuals.

His father, who was demobilised only in 1919, died a year later following a work accident.

Brazda grew up in Brossen, later in nearby Meuselwitz where he started training as a roofer, failing to get an apprenticeship as a sales assistant with a gentlemen's outfitter.

In the early 1930s, prior to the Nazis' accession to power, he was able to live his sexuality openly, thanks to the climate of relative tolerance which prevailed in the last days of the Weimar Republic.

In the summer of 1933, he met Werner, his first companion.

Together they shared a sublease in the house of a Jehovah's Witness landlady, who was fully aware and tolerant of the bond existing between them.

In the following two years, despite the Nazi accession to power and the subsequent reinforcement of Paragraph 175, they led a happy life, befriending other male homosexuals, and would often take trips locally, or further away, to visit gay meeting places, such as the "New York" Café in Leipzig.

As of 1935, the Nazis extension of legal provisions criminalizing homosexuality generated a dramatic increase of lawsuits against homosexuals.

In 1936, Werner was enlisted to do his military service and Brazda took up a position as bellhop at a hotel in Leipzig.

Fernand had been deported on political grounds, having been involved in the International Brigades and fought between 1936 and 1938 in the Spanish Civil War.

Thus, in 1937, following police investigations into the lives of his gay friends, Brazda was suspected and remanded in custody pending further enquiries.

In Altenburg, he was eventually tried and sentenced to six months in prison for breaching the terms of Paragraph 175.

Werner was tried and sentenced elsewhere and circumstances led to them losing sight of each other in the ensuing months.

Having served his sentence, Brazda was soon to be expelled from Germany, shortly after his release from prison in October 1937.

From a legal and technical point of view, he was considered a Czechoslovak citizen with a criminal record and, as such, treated as persona non grata in Nazi Germany, and made to leave the country.

Because his parents had not taught him Czech, he left for what was technically his country, but opted to settle in the German-speaking region of Sudetenland, the westernmost province of Czechoslovakia, bordering on Germany.

There, he went to live in Karlsbad (today Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic).

Despite the province's annexation by Nazi Germany less than a year later, Brazda managed to find work as a roofer and settled in with a new partner by the name of Anton.

Unfortunately, Brazda's name came up again in police enquiries led against distant gay acquaintances.

Werner is rumoured to have died in 1940 while on military duty on the French front, in the battles raging against Britain.

In April 1941, he was imprisoned again on suspicion of homosexual activities, and later charged by a court in the town of Eger (today Cheb in the Czech Republic), following a new trial.

In June 1942, instead of being released at the end of his second prison term, he was remanded in "Schutzhaft", or protective custody, the first measure leading to his deportation to a KZ (Konzentrationslager).

Brazda was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp on 8 August 1942 and remained there until its liberation, on 11 April 1945.

He was prisoner number 7952 and started with forced labour at the stone quarry, prior to being posted to a lighter task in the quarry's infirmary.

Several months later, he joined the roofers unit, part of the "Bauhof" kommando, in charge of maintaining the numerous buildings that constituted the camp (dormitories, barracks, administrative buildings, armament factories, etc.).

On many occasions, Brazda was a witness of Nazi cruelty towards homosexuals as well as other detainees, aware of the fate awaiting a lot of them at the camp's revier: it was not uncommon for sick or disabled prisoners to be executed by lethal injection at the sick bay.

After the liberation of Buchenwald, Brazda settled in Alsace, northeastern France, in May 1945 and lived there for the rest of his life.

Although other gay men who survived the Holocaust are still alive, they were not known to the Nazis as homosexuals and were not deported as pink triangle internees.

At least two gay men who were interned as Jews, for instance, have spoken publicly of their experiences.

Brazda was born in Brossen (now part of Meuselwitz, Thuringia, Germany), the last of eight siblings, born to parents originating in Bohemia and who had emigrated to Saxony to earn a living (his father worked at the local brown coal mines).

After World War I, he became a Czechoslovak citizen, owing to his parents' origins in that newly established country.

With the help of a kapo who hid him in the early days of April 1945, shortly before the camp's evacuation, Brazda was able to avoid being sent away with thousands of prisoners.

These forced evacuation measures turned into death marches for nearly half of them, who were shot on the spot if they were too weak to sustain the pace.

Within the roofers' kommando, Brazda had been able to make friends with other deportees, mostly communists, and in particular with Fernand, a Frenchman from Mulhouse, in the Alsace province.

After the camp's liberation, instead of returning to his place of birth and his family who had stayed in Germany, Brazda decided to follow the Frenchman to the latter's home country.

In May 1945, both eventually arrived in Mulhouse, shortly after VE Day.

Brazda soon found employment again, still as a roofer.

Brazda decided to settle in southern Alsace and started visiting local gay cruising grounds, noticeably the Steinbach public garden where Pierre Seel, another homosexual deportee, had been identified by the French police shortly before the outbreak of World War II.

In the early 1950s, at a costume ball, Brazda met Edouard "Edi" Mayer, who became his life companion.