Gay Concentration Camp Survivor Dies at 98

The last known gay concentration camp survivor imprisoned because of his sexual orientation has died, according to Germany’s Lesbian and Gay Association.



Rudolf Brazda, who was held at the Buchenwald concentration camp for three years until U.S. forces liberated the camp in 1945, died Wednesday at the age of 98, the Associated Press reports.



In a 2008 interview with the French gay magazine Têtu, Brazda spoke for the first time of his imprisonment since he made remarks at the dedication ceremony of a Berlin memorial to gay victims of the Third Reich. “The way Nazis treated the ‘pink triangles’ is unspeakable,” Brazda said, referring to the emblem gays were forced to wear. “They had absolutely no mercy.”



After he was freed from Buchenwald, Brazda moved to France, where he lived for 35 years with his partner, who died in 2002.



Read the AP story here.