Gay Holocaust Survivor Recounts Horror

Rudolf Brazda, who may be the last surviving man deported to a concentration camp by the Nazis for being gay, remembers his time as a prisoner at Buchenwald.

Brazda, 97, spoke for a video interview with Yagg, the French gay news source. His testimony was previously the subject of Itinerary of a Pink Triangle, a book by Jean-Luc Schwab.

“The son of Tcheckoslovaquian immigrants in Germany, Rudolf Brazda was 20 when Hitler rose to power,” reports Yagg. “He had lived his homosexuality freely and openly until the law penalizing homosexuality, the notorious ‘Paragraph 175,’ was toughened by the Nazi regime. On August 8, 1942, after having gone to prison twice, he was sent to the concentration camp of Buchenwald, where he was given the number 7952, and a pink triangle.”

Watch the video.