Rudolf Brazda was a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp. He was imprisoned in 1942 because of his homosexuality. Up until the opening ceremony of the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime on May 27, 2008, it was commonly assumed that there were no living witnesses who had been imprisoned at a concentration camp because of their homosexuality. Only as a result of media coverage of the memorial’s inauguration did Rudolf Brazda (born 1913) get in touch with the Lesbian and Gay Federation (LSVD). He died yesterday, on August 3, 2011, in Bantzenheim, Oberelsass.
Rudolf Brazda was born the youngest of eight children of a family of Czech immigrants in Meuselwitz, Thuringia. As a young adult, he discovered his homosexuality. After the Nazi’s seizure of power, Rudolf Brazda was arrested at a roundup of homosexuals. He received a jail sentence of six month, according to article 175. His expulsion from Germany followed, forcing him to resettle in Czechoslovakia. But in 1938, the National Socialists caught up with him. In 1942, he was imprisoned in Buchenwald where he had to perform forced labour in a quarry. During the last weeks before the liberation by the US army on April 11, 1945, he was helped by a Kapo to hide in one of the camp’s hog houses. After the war he moved to France where homosexuality was not subjected to penalties.
In June 2008, Rudolf Brazda gave one of his first extensive interviews for the video archive of the Foundation. It can be seen at the Information Centre of the memorial.
In May this year, his biography »Das Glück kam immer zu mir« (»Happiness always found its way to me«), written by Alexander Zinn, was presented at Berlin’s Red City Hall. However, his health prevented him from joining the event himself.
In June, Rudolf Brazda celebrated his 98th birthday.
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