During the Holocaust, the Nazis targeted Jews, the Roma people, mentally disabled people, and queers for death. In the concentration and extermination camps, gay men were forced to wear the pink triangle, lesbians the black triangle. Besides being subjected to verbal abuse, beatings, starvation, forced labor and the like, some gay men and lesbians were also subjected to medical torture.
The last surviving “pink triangle,” Rudolph Brazda, has died. According to On Top Magazine:
Rudolf Brazda, the last known gay Nazi death camp survivor, died at 98 in France on Wednesday, the AFP reported.
Brazda died at a hospital in Bantzenheim, France in his sleep, Philippe Couillet, a friend and associate of Brazda, told the European news service.
At the age of 29, Brazda was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in August 1942. He remained in the camp until 1945, when the camp was liberated by allied troops.
Being gay was a crime under Nazi Germany’s laws, and tens of thousands of people were convicted and sent to concentration camps.
What the story fails to mention is when these camps were liberated by some Americans (unlike the Soviets and Brits), those queers imprisoned by the Nazis were forced to serve out their sentences in German prisons. This is how crazily homophobic the US was during that time–some queer concentration camp survivors were forced to serve out their Nazi imposed sentences.
Anyway, here’s a link to an earlier story on Mr. Brazda. He was an incredibly brave man.
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