While the GOP presidential candidates are signing
anti-gay petitions in this country Rudolf Brazda who
is believed to be the last surviving person sent to a
concentration camp because of his homosexuality
died Wednesday at 98. The Berlin branch of the
Lesbian & Gay Association, or LSVD, said Brazda
died Wednesday. Brazda was sent to Buchenwald
concentration camp in August 1942 & held until its
liberation by U.S. forces in 1945.
Nazi Germany outlawed homosexuality saying it
threatened the German race & convicted some
50,000 homosexuals as criminals. An estimated
10,000 to 15,000 gay men were sent to concentration
camps where few survived. Brazda was born in 1913.
He grew up in Meuselwitz & repeatedly ran into trouble
with Nazi authorities over his homosexuality before
he was sent to Buchenwald. Brazda lived in the Alsace
region of eastern France after World War II. This year
he was named a knight in the country's Legion of Honor.
Berlin's openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit stated
"Brazda is an example of how important the work of
remembrance is for our future. Fewer & fewer people
can give information about repression under the Nazi
dictatorship authentically & from their own experience."
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1 comment:
Ninety-eight-year-old Brazda is believed to be the last gay man alive who can recount what it was like to live as a homosexual man during the Third Reich. He's a man who can also remember the persecution, the legal proceedings against gays, the punishment and murder of his friends. But he also remembers what it was like to have sex in a concentration camp and what it felt like to be liberated.
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