Lessons Learned: Surviving the Holocaust as a Gay Man

Rudolf Brazda, who died six years ago, recounted his experiences surviving Buchenwald. Watch him tell his story as we honor International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

By Neal Broverman

 

January 27 2017 

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On January 27, the world honors the millions of victims of the Holocaust — the systematic murdering of Jews, disabled people, gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and gays at the hands of Germany's Nazi regime during World War II.

German-born Rudolf Brazda was one of the gay men imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. After being arrested for homosexual behavior — illegal in Germany at the time, thanks to the infamous Paragraph 175 — he was sent to the Buchenwald camp, where he was regularly subjected to abuse. Brazda was able to survive thanks to his ability to adapt and the aid of a possibly gay SS officer who became "infatuated" with him. Brazda recounted his experiences at Buchenwald in a video made shortly before his death in 2011; watch it below. 

Read more here about Brazda, who eventually settled in France with his partner and outlived nearly all his Nazi captors.

Rudolf Brazda, last of the Pink Triangles... by EugeneOcie

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