BERLIN – A German gay rights group says Rudolf Brazda, believed to be the last surviving person who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp because of his homosexuality, has died. He was 98.
Germany's Lesbian and Gay Association, or LSVD, said that Brazda died on Wednesday.
Brazda was sent to the Nazis' Buchenwald concentration camp in August 1942 and held there until its liberation by U.S. forces in 1945.
Nazi Germany declared homosexuality an aberration that threatened the German race. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 gay men were deported to concentration camps, where few survived.
When a memorial to the Nazis' gay victims was unveiled in Berlin in 2008, the LSVD said it knew of no surviving ex-prisoners. The group said Thursday that it was then contacted by Brazda, who visited the memorial at its invitation.