Accord­ing to esti­mates by the Unit­ed States Holo­caust Muse­um, any­where from 5,000 to 15,000 gay men were impris­oned in con­cen­tra­tion camps under the Third Reich, where they were some­times the sub­jects of grue­some exper­i­ments. Pri­or to this mass per­se­cu­tion, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was crim­i­nal­ized under the so-called Para­graph 175 of the crim­i­nal code, and the Gestapo was charged with “reg­is­ter­ing” gays, who could be sen­tenced to prison terms of up to ten years for violations–in addi­tion to per­ma­nent loss of many civ­il rights–and even worse penal­ties, like cas­tra­tion. Gay men con­vict­ed under these laws had to wear a pink tri­an­gle to iden­ti­fy them­selves. The short doc­u­men­tary above tells the sto­ry of Rudolf Braz­da, the last camp sur­vivor to have worn the pink tri­an­gle. Braz­da died last year at the age of 98.

Braz­da, who lived as an open­ly gay man in the thir­ties, was con­vict­ed under Para­graph 175 in 1937 and served a term of six months. He thought this might be the extent of his harass­ment by the Nazis, but ulti­mate­ly, he was arrest­ed and sent to Buchen­wald in 1942, where he would spend three years. In the video above, Braz­da most­ly tells his own sto­ry, in Ger­man with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. It’s not the first time he has done so. Brazda’s sto­ry was promi­nent­ly fea­tured in a book by author Jean-Luc Schwab (who also appears above), Itin­er­ary of the Pink Tri­an­gle (Itin­eraire d’un Tri­an­gle rose), which recounts the dehu­man­iz­ing expe­ri­ences of gay men dur­ing the Holo­caust. Schwab’s book and the brief inter­view above pre­serve impor­tant tes­ti­mo­ny from a man who was “very like­ly the last vic­tim and the last wit­ness” of the Nazi per­se­cu­tion of homo­sex­u­al men in the 30s and 40s. Braz­da’s will­ing­ness to tell his sto­ry has been invalu­able to schol­ars and activists seek­ing to doc­u­ment this lit­tle-known (and often denied) his­to­ry.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

On this day 100 years ago, Theodore Roo­sevelt record­ed his great speech, “The Right of the Peo­ple to Rule.” The polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the speech bear some resem­blance to those of today: 1912 was a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year, and the coun­try was divid­ed.

The Repub­li­can Par­ty, though, was espe­cial­ly divid­ed. Roo­sevelt had already served two terms as pres­i­dent under the Repub­li­can ban­ner, but by 1912 he had become deeply dis­ap­point­ed in what he saw as the reac­tionary drift of his suc­ces­sor and one-time friend, William Howard Taft. He decid­ed to chal­lenge Taft for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion. When Roo­sevelt lost at the con­ven­tion he pressed ahead any­way, form­ing the Pro­gres­sive (“Bull Moose”) Par­ty.

Taft knew he was no match for the charis­mat­ic Roo­sevelt in a pop­u­lar elec­tion, but he saw his role in the sit­u­a­tion as being the guardian of the con­ser­v­a­tive char­ac­ter of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. With only 24% of the vote, Taft came in third place in the Novem­ber elec­tion, behind the Demo­c­rat Woodrow Wil­son (41%) and Roo­sevelt (27%). It was an embar­rass­ing out­come for a sit­ting pres­i­dent, but in one sense Taft won: The Repub­li­can par­ty took a con­ser­v­a­tive turn, and stayed on that course.

Roo­sevelt’s speech was record­ed on an Edi­son cylin­der at his Sag­amore Hill Estate in Oys­ter Bay, New York on August 16, 1912, dur­ing a brief lull in the cam­paign fol­low­ing the Pro­gres­sive Par­ty Con­ven­tion. It was one of sev­er­al cam­paign speech­es that were record­ed and then dis­trib­uted around the coun­try before the gen­er­al elec­tion. It’s based part­ly on a speech he gave on March 20, 1912 at Carnegie Hall.

In the record­ed ver­sion, Roo­sevelt speaks for the need to find a polit­i­cal mid­dle ground, warn­ing against the dan­ger of ultra-con­ser­vatism. “It would be well,” he says, “if our peo­ple would study the his­to­ry of a sis­ter repub­lic. All the woes of France for a cen­tu­ry and a quar­ter have been due to the fol­ly of her peo­ple in split­ting into the two camps of unrea­son­able con­ser­vatism and unrea­son­able rad­i­cal­ism. Had pre-Rev­o­lu­tion­ary France lis­tened to men like Tur­got, and backed them up, all would have gone well. But the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of priv­i­lege, the Bour­bon reac­tionar­ies, the short­sight­ed ultra-con­ser­v­a­tives, turned down Tur­got; and found that instead of him they had obtained Robe­spierre.”

Near the end, Roo­sevelt sounds an impas­sioned call:

Friends, our task as Amer­i­cans is to strive for social and indus­tri­al jus­tice, achieved through the gen­uine rule of the peo­ple. This is our end, our pur­pose. The meth­ods for achiev­ing the end are mere­ly expe­di­ents, to be final­ly accept­ed or reject­ed accord­ing as actu­al expe­ri­ence shows that they work well or ill. But in our hearts we must have this lofty pur­pose, and we must strive for it in all earnest­ness and sin­cer­i­ty, or our work will come to noth­ing. In order to suc­ceed we need lead­ers of inspired ide­al­ism, lead­ers to whom are grant­ed great visions, who dream great­ly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kin­dle the peo­ple with the fire from their own burn­ing souls.

If you would like to read along as you lis­ten to Roo­sevelt’s voice, click here to open the full text in a new win­dow.

Jesse Owens, the son of a share­crop­per and grand­son of slaves, went to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and upset Hitler’s visions of Aryan suprema­cy. He did it not once, but four times, win­ning gold medals in the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, the long jump and the 4 x 100 meter relay. The first race was cap­tured by the Ger­man filmmaker/propagandist Leni Riefen­stahl in her famous film doc­u­ment­ing the 1936 Games, Olympia. It’s all queued up above and ready to go.

Now the cru­el foot­note to this sto­ry: after his four vic­to­ries, Owens returned to the U.S. and imme­di­ate­ly con­front­ed the cold racist atti­tudes of his coun­try­men. There was no pause, no reprieve, even for an Olympic gold medal­ist. Lat­er, he recalled:

When I came back to my native coun­try, after all the sto­ries about Hitler, I could­n’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I could­n’t live where I want­ed. I was­n’t invit­ed to shake hands with Hitler, but I was­n’t invit­ed to the White House to shake hands with the Pres­i­dent, either.

New York City did hold a tick­er-tape parade in his hon­or. But when he attend­ed a recep­tion at the Wal­dorf-Asto­ria, he was forced to ride the freight ele­va­tor. And he did­n’t make it to the White House until Eisen­how­er named him an “Ambas­sador of Sports” in 1955. FDR and Tru­man nev­er both­ered to extend an invi­ta­tion to the Olympic hero. Stephen elab­o­rates on all of this below: