Rudolf Brazda was the last
known concentration camp survivor deported by Nazi Germany on charges of
homosexuality died he was , 98.
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. 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.
(June 26, 1913 – August 3, 2011)
Life
1913–1937: Caught in interwar upheaval
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. His father, who was demobilised only in
1919, died in 1922 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 and female homosexuals,
and would often take trips locally, or further away, to visit gay
meeting places, such as the "New York" Café in
Leipzig.
[6]
In 1936, Werner was enlisted to do his military service and Brazda took up a position as
bellhop
at a hotel in Leipzig. As of 1935, the Nazis extension of legal
provisions criminalizing homosexuality generated a dramatic increase of
lawsuits against homosexuals. 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. Werner is rumoured to have died in 1940 while on
military duty on the French front, in the battles raging against
Britain.
1938–1941: Exiled in Sudetenland
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 western-most 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
friend by the name of Anton. Unfortunately, Brazda's name came up again
in police enquiries led against distant gay acquaintances. 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 KL (
Konzentrationslager).
1942–1945: Buchenwald
Brazda was deported to the
Buchenwald concentration camp
on August 8, 1942, and remained there until its liberation, on April
11, 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 prisoners or cripples to be executed by lethal injection at the sick bay.
[7]
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.
[8]
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. 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. In May 1945, both eventually arrived in Mulhouse, shortly after
VE Day. Brazda soon found employment again, still as a roofer.
After 1945: Life in France
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. In the early 1960s, they moved
into a house they built in the suburbs of Mulhouse, where Brazda resided
until not long before his death. He tended to Edi for over 30 years
after Edi was crippled by a severe work accident, until his death in
2003.
[9]
As of 2008: Public recognition of his life story
In spite of old age, he remained a keen observer and follower of the
news. Thus, in 2008, when he heard on German TV of the impending
unveiling of
a memorial to homosexual victims of Nazism in
Berlin,
he decided to make himself known. Although he was not present at the
monument's inauguration on May 27, 2008, an invitation was extended to
him to attend a ceremony a month later, on the morning of the Berlin CSD
gay pride march. Brazda subsequently was invited to attend a number of
gay events, including Europride Zurich in 2009 and some smaller scaled
events in France, Switzerland and Germany.
In 2010, Rudolf Brazda took part in Mulhouse in the unveiling of a plaque in memory of
Pierre Seel and others who were deported because of their homosexuality
[10] and was a guest of honour at a remembrance ceremony at
Buchenwald.
[11]
On Saturday, September 25, 2010, Brazda was symbolically present on
the site of the former Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp on the
occasion of a plaque unveiling ceremony. The plaque reads, "In Memory of
the Victims of Nazi Barbarity, Deported Because of Their
Homosexuality."
[12]
In 2010, Brazda also received the gold medals of the cities of
Toulouse and
Nancy
in recognition of his commitment to bear witness locally and nationally
in France. Brazda was determined to continue speaking out about his
past,
[13]
in the hope that younger generations remain vigilant in the face of
present day behaviour and thought patterns similar to those which led to
the persecutions endured by homosexuals during the Nazi era.
In recognition of his numerous contributions to public debates, media
interviews and research articles, nationally and internationally, not
least his involvement in a citizens group promoting awareness of
homosexual deportation in France, Brazda was appointed Knight in the
National order of the
Legion of Honour, in the 2011 Easter honours list.
[14]
He received his Knight insigna four days later from Marie-José Chombart
de Lauwe, president of the French Foundation for the Remembrance of
Deportation, in
Puteaux (the city whose gold medal he also received on that occasion), in the presence, among others, of
Raymond Aubrac, a well-known
French Resistance figure.
[15]
Brazda supported research work by the French citizens group
Les « Oublié(e)s » de la Mémoire who made him an honorary member on October 3, 2008.
His original biography,
Itinéraire d'un Triangle rose (
A Pink Triangle's life journey;
currently available in French, Portuguese, Spanish and Czech) is the
only book he personally verified and authorised. It is the testimony of
the likely last survivor of those men who were marked by a
pink triangle
and shows how Nazi repression of homosexuality directly impacted his
life path. For the first time a book discloses the details of minute
police investigations led to convict him and other homosexuals who had
come under scrutiny. It also deals with issues such a human sexuality in
concentration camps.
A German-language biography of Brazda also has been published:
"Das Glück kam immer zu mir": Rudolf Brazda—Das Überleben eines Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich by Alexander Zinn (Campus Verlag, 2011). The book is currently available only in the original language.
Death
Brazda died on August 3, 2011, at the age of 98, at Les Molènes, an assisted living facility in the town of
Bantzenheim in northeastern France.
[16][17]
His death was first announced by Yagg.com, a French gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender news and online community site, quoting his
French biographer and last will's executor.
[18]
Brazda's funeral was held on August 8, 2011, in Mulhouse, France. After
a remembrance service attended by approximately 40 people, his body was
cremated, and his ashes interred alongside those of his late partner
Edouard Mayer, in the Cemetery of Mulhouse.
[19]
Tributes and memorials
Immediately following Rudolf Brazda's death, numerous organizations
and officials in France paid tribute to his memory. Among those
releasing statements were
Marc Laffineur, secretary of state for the Ministry of Defense and Veterans Affairs; the
Socialist Party (France); Ian Brossat, president of the
French Communist Party/
Left Party (France) caucus of the Paris City Council;
Jean-Luc Romero, president of Elus Locaux Contre le Sida (Local Elected Officials Against AIDS); the AIDS activist organization
ACT UP–Paris;
Les Oubli-é-es de la Mémoire; and the Mémorial de la Déportation
Homosexuelle, a national French association that commemorates the
homosexual victims of Nazi persecution.
[17][20]
Obituaries of Rudolf Brazda appeared in publications and on websites
worldwide. English-language obituaries based on original reporting and
analysis were published by the
Associated Press (United States); Czech Position (Prague); the
Los Angeles Times;
The New York Times;
RFI (France);
The Telegraph ;
The Independent (London);
UPI (United States); and numerous other media outlets.
On September 28, 2011, a national tribute ceremony to Rudolf was organised by
Les « Oublié(e)s » de la Mémoire and patroned by Mr.
Marc Laffineur,
Secretary of State for Defence and Veterans. It was held at
Saint-Roch's Church, Paris, which houses a memorial chapel to victims of
Deportation. Officials, diplomacy representatives, as well as militants
and association representatives were in attendance. It was yet another
opportunity to recall that in the last three years of his life, Rudolf
had become a unique witness, and that remembering homosexual deportation
today remains essential in the struggle against discriminations.
[21]
Bibliography
Biographies
- Jean-Luc Schwab, Rudolf Brazda (2010). Itinéraire d'un Triangle rose (1st ed.). Éditions Florent Massot. ISBN 978-2-916546-48-3.
- Zinn, Alexander (2011). "Das Glück kam immer zu mir": Rudolf Brazda—Das Überleben eines Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich (1st ed.). Campus Verlag. ISBN 978-3-593-39435-0.
- Jean-Luc Schwab, Rudolf Brazda (2011). Triângulo rosa - Um homossexual no campo de concentração nazista (1st ed.). Mescla Editorial. ISBN 978-85-88641-13-6.
- Schwab, Jean-Luc (2011). Rudolf Brazda. Itinerario de un triángulo rosa (1st ed.). Alianza Editorial. ISBN 978-84-206-6433-0.
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