Rudolf Brazda

Rudolf Brazda (* 26 June 1913 in Brossen, Zeitz District; † 3 August 2011 in Bantzenheim, Upper Alsace), roofer, Josephine Baker imitator and survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

A hot summer’s day in 1933. The 20-year old roofer’s apprentice Rudolf Brazda was keeping an eye out for a new heartthrob at the “Phönix” swimming bath of the Mumsdorf coal mine. “All at once, I saw the most beautiful young boy. I almost went crazy, you could say. He was standing in front of the pool in a long bathrobe and I wondered, how on earth could I get together with him, should I speak to him? I went over to him but couldn’t find anything to say. So I simply pushed him into the water. He laughed more than cried and didn’t reproach me. Perhaps he also liked me. That was also the case. At first sight.”

^{Photo: The young Rudolf Brazda
(Archive photo provided by Jean-Luc SCHWAB).}

Rudolf Brazda’s description of his first encounter with Werner Bilz betrays much regarding the character of this man, who can be regarded as the last contemporary witness of those imprisoned in a concentration camp on account of homosexuality. His charm and humour enabled him during his life to approach people and win them over. This talent proved to be the ticket to survival during a period characterised by the most massive wave of persecution of gay men in German history. “Luck was always on my side,” Rudolf Brazda told me in our very first discussion in June 2008. An astounding lifetime balance sheet for a man who survived almost two years in prison and three years concentration camp.

But Rudolf Brazda knew how to preserve his will to live even under the most adverse circumstances. This disposition was already evident in his youth, which he spent in the little village Brossen in the Altenburger Land district. When Brazda discovered his interest in other boys in the late 1920s, he simply changed his gender in order to approach the objects of his desire. He put on his sister’s clothes and sneaked away from Brossener Hof to flirt with men in the inns of the neighbouring villages. His great role model was Josephine Baker. After seeing the black naked dancer in the cinema, he imitated her wild dancing and performed in this style in the dance halls of Altenburger Land.

However, he only had his gay ‘coming-out’ when he met Werner Bilz in the summer following the National Socialist takeover. Just a few months later, he moved in with the latter in the neighbouring town of Meuselwitz, where both sublet rooms from the widow Helene Mahrenholz. The landlady even gave up her bedroom for the pair. “Yes, the bedroom where Mrs Mahrenholz had slept, she gave it to us, because it was bigger and then we slept in her bed. It was a big bed, she had used to sleep in it with her husband.” The two set up a “marital” bedroom under the noses of the other house occupants. They apparently had as little fear of the neighbours gossiping and the police and public prosecutor learning of this as the landlady, who could have been charged for procuration under Section 175.

An amazingly open atmosphere did in fact prevail at that time in Meuselwitz: Brazda told me of tolerant family members and work colleagues, wild parties and a wedding that he celebrated with his first great love Werner. “There was also one of my relatives who gave us his blessings as parson. We simply had a wonderful fun party at this wedding.” Not just Rudolf’s family was invited at the time. “There were good friends of mine too, also homo, who were able to visit me in women’s clothes. Jesus, when I think how the neighbours who lived on the big courtyard stared! They weren’t sure whether they were boys or really girls? At the time, the people were so tolerant, they simply went along with it, with the kind of life we homosexuals lived.”

The criminal prosecution authorities were evidently out of their depth with the subject. The homosexual persecution ordered from Berlin was slow to get off the ground in rural areas in particular, where there neither vice departments specialised in homosexuals nor experienced detectives. A largescale wave of persecution only occurred at the beginning of 1937 after the Altenburger CID had been trained by officers from Weimar. Rudolf Brazda was arrested on 8 April 1937 in Leipzig. Four weeks of interrogations and pre-trial detention finally wore him down so much that he confessed in tears to this relationship to Werner on 5 May. Rudolf was sentenced to six months in prison on 14 May 1937 by the Altenburg Regional Court. This was a comparatively mild sentence. It was chalked up to his credit that he had only had contact to Werner and therefore “had spread the pestilence of unnatural fornication only to a limited degree.”

The court cases against the Altenburger homosexuals were accompanied by a press campaign intended to provide the wave of persecution with an ideological justification. For example, according to a report of the Altenburger Landeszeitung on 18 July 1937, “the carriers and distributors of this poison [will be purposefully and mercilessly] removed from the body of the people in order to begin the healing process with the excretion of this foreign body.” The attempt was made to destroy any empathy with the victims through the use of biological terminology. “Personal sympathy must remain silent even if the tragedy of human inadequacy is hidden behind bars. The health of the people and the protection of its valuable youth are the highest priority. Therefore, the people demand merciless severity from the judges.”

Brazda was released from prison in October 1937. However, as the son of Czech immigrants, he was now “expelled from the Reich.” He had to leave Germany within a matter of weeks. Rudolf went to the Sudetenland, where he toured the countryside with a Jewish theatre group and performed operettas. His speciality was once again imitations of Josephine Baker with which he delighted the audiences.

After the German occupation, he was once again arrested in 1941 and sentenced to 14 months in prison as a “recidivist”. After serving the sentence in summer 1942, he was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Here too, it was his ability to approach people with which he tried his luck and ensured his survival. It was above all the Communist foremen, themselves prisoners but also SS accomplices, whom he was repeatedly able to win over and who saved his life several times. After the liberation in 1945, Rudolf went to France, where he met the love of his life in 1950: Eddi, with whom he lived together until the latter’s death in 2003.

Like most persecuted homosexuals, Rudolf Brazda did not receive any compensation for his imprisonment and concentration camp internment. In 1989 and 1992 he submitted applications that were rejected because homosexuals were not included in the persecuted groups listed in the Federal Compensation Act and as a foreigner he did not have any claim to support from the General War Consequences Hardship Fund either.

Like most “pink triangle prisoners”, Rudolf Brazda said nothing about his fate for decades. Only the inauguration of the Berlin monument to homosexuals persecuted under National Socialism inspired him to go public and tell his story.

Rudolf died on 3 August 2011 at the age of 98. The fact that he was able to tell the story of his persecution, and as a result suddenly aroused interest worldwide, gave him at least some of the “satisfaction” he had demanded in his compensation applications.

Alexander Zinn is a qualified sociologist and completed his doctorate at the Max Weber College of the University of Erfurt on the National Socialist persecution of homosexuals in Thuringia. He published a biography of Rudolf Brazda in April 2011 in the Campus Verlag: Das Glück kam immer zu mir. Rudolf Brazda – Das Überleben eines Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich. 356 pages, 24.90 euros. Das Glück kam immer zu mir. Rudolf Brazda – Das Überleben eines Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich . 356 Seiten, 24,90 Euro.

Jean-Luc Schwab is in charge of a French memorial association that deals with the deportation of homosexuals. When he learnt of Rudolf Brazda in June 2008, Schwab discovered that he was living in the immediate vicinity of the one surviving contemporary witness Brazda. He got into contact with him and began to take down his testimony and in parallel to this investigated archives in Germany, France and the Czech Republic. In 2009, he undertook two journeys with Rudolf Brazda to the places where the latter had lived in Germany and the Czech Republic and in 2010 he published the biography authorised by Rudolf Brazda under the French title Itinéraire d’un Triangle rose (A pink triangle prisoner’s journey through life). The book has in the meantime also been published in Brazil, Spain and the Czech Republic. Jean-Luc Schwab took care of Rudolf Brazda in the final years of his life and is his executor.