For decades, the subject of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals during the Third Reich was swept under the rug and reparations were almost never paid. Rudolf Brazda, who may be the last living gay man to have survived the terror, shares his life story in a newly published book.
His body emaciated and his toothless mouth hanging open, Rudolf Brazda is skin and bones. Then comes his scream — a loud lament that becomes a moan and then tapers off. Brazda is lying in his hospital bed, waiting at death’s door. He alternately shouts, whispers or goes silent. Minutes creep by, then a quarter of an hour, then half an hour. Sometimes he’ll say something and then go quiet again.
When he does speak, he utters lines like, “I’m too old to live,” “I’m waiting for time to pass by,” “I just don’t want to do this anymore!” or “Everything’s shit.”
The door to Room 8411 opens. Worried about the condition of her elderly patient, a nurse at the Emile Muller Hospital in the Alsatian city of Mulhouse has come in to check on Brazda. She doesn’t speak any German and he barely speaks any French, so they communicate by making faces at each other. The nurse raises a questioning eyebrow at her patient and he shakes his head. Then he winks at her and smiles. It’s nothing serious.
“You comédien,” she says, playfully cursing at him in French. Ever the comedian and charmer, Brazda, grins back at her. It is exactly these traits that helped him to cheat death when he was a prisoner at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
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.
Rudolf Brazda has a fascinating story. Let’s hope we can learn much from this man while he is still here with us and always remember what gay men and women suffered during the holocaust and ensure it never happens again.