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| Chart of prisoner markings in Nazi concentration camps, circa 1940; the pink triangles for "homosexuell" are third column from the right |
Rudolf Brazda, 98, died last Wednesday in northern France. Believed to be the last gay survivor of the Holocaust, he was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp by the Nazis in 1942. His remains will be cremated and interred next to those of his partner, Edouard Meyer, who lived together for more than 50 years.
From the Jerusalem Post:
While in Germany in 2009, Brazda’s first visit to his native country in 64 years, he examined his Buchenwald concentration camp documents. “Yet they were never able to destroy me. I am not ashamed,” he noted.
Commenting on the contemporary gay and lesbian generation, he said, “They should consider themselves lucky to live in a free democracy.” . . .
This past April, France appointed Brazda a Knight of the Legion of Honor. Germany chose not to award Brazda the Federal Cross of Merit. Brazda did not receive monetary compensation from the German government for his incarceration in Buchenwald.
Successive post-Holocaust German governments [have] resisted paying financial compensation for gay victims of the Nazi period.
Your Head Trucker encourages all you guys to watch the documentary Paragraph 175, which has many interviews with gay concentration camp survivors; it's a heartbreaking story - but we must remember our past.
Don't think it can't happen again. Don't think it can't happen here. Don't think it can't happen to you.
It can.
