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Last Gay Holocaust Survivor Has Died
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Rudolpf Brazda, the last surviving man "to be sent to a Nazi concentration camp because of his homosexuality", has died. He was 98-years-old, according to the Jewish Journal. One of an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 gay men who were sent to concentration camps, Brazda was first arrested in 1937 by the Nazis where he spent six months in prison. The second arrest came four years later and he was sent to Buchenwald, "where he stayed until liberation in 1945."
Brazda was unknown until he came forward during the 2008 opening of a new memorial to homosexual survivors of the Nazis. It had been believed that no gay concentration camp survivors were still living. Brazda basked in the publicity in later years, flirting with reporters, the mayor of Berlin and his biographer, and enjoying telling the story of his life. In 1934, three years before being arrested, he and his boyfriend held a wedding ceremony with his mother and sisters attending, and a fake priest presiding over the ceremony.
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