BURIED TOGETHER
Partner Édouard Mayer, buried together
Queer Places:
Cimetière Central, Mulhouse, Francia
Rudolf
Brazda (26 June 1913 – 3 August 2011) was the last known concentration
camp survivor deported by Nazi Germany on charges of homosexuality.[1][2]
Brazda spent nearly three years at the Buchenwald concentration camp,
where his prisoner uniform was branded with the distinctive pink triangle
that the Nazis used to mark men interned as homosexuals. After the
liberation of Buchenwald, Brazda settled in Alsace, northeastern France,
in May 1945 and lived there for the rest of his life.
Although other gay men who survived the Holocaust are still alive, they
were not known to the Nazis as homosexuals and were not deported as pink
triangle internees. At least two gay men who were interned as Jews, for
instance, have spoken publicly of their experiences.[3][4][5]
Brazda decided to settle in southern Alsace and started visiting local
gay cruising grounds, noticeably the Steinbach public garden where
Pierre Seel, another
homosexual deportee, had been identified by the French police shortly
before the outbreak of World War II.
In the early 1950s, at a costume ball, Brazda met
Edouard "Edi" Mayer, who became his
life companion. In the early 1960s, they moved into a house they built in
the suburbs of Mulhouse, where Brazda resided until not long before his
death. He tended to Edi for over 30 years after Edi was crippled by a
severe work accident, until his death in 2003.[9]
Brazda died on 3 August 2011, at the age of 98, at Les Molènes, an
assisted living facility in the town of Bantzenheim in northeastern
France.[16][17]
His death was first announced by Yagg.com, a French gay, lesbian, bisexual
and transgender news and online community site, quoting his French
biographer and last will's executor.[18]
Brazda's funeral was held on 8 August 2011 in Mulhouse, France. After a
remembrance service attended by approximately 40 people, his body was
cremated, and his ashes interred alongside those of his late partner
Edouard Mayer, in the Cemetery of Mulhouse.[19]
My published books:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Brazda