Between memory and silence, the late testimony of a deported homosexual

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7917.2014v19n2p61

This article focuses on the biography of Rudolf Brazda, written by Jean-Luc Schwab. This biography narrates the life and, especially, the deportation of Rudolf Bradzda to the concentration camp of Buchenwald, due to his homosexuality. Brazda was the last pink triangle, title given to homosexuals who were deported to Nazi concentration camps, and one of the few who managed to leave his testimony recorded, even though the writing of another. Thus, I seek in theoretical reflections on history, memory and modernity, a way to point out that narratives such as Brazda’s are delayed or difficult to enter in the collective memory and, therefore, narrate them is configured as struggles against oblivion, silencing and it is a reconstitution of the limits of the historical narrative. Through this text, I propose that history is not made of lines but of wrinkles, the temporality must constantly be revised and that the objective image of collective experience that sustained modernity must be shaken and other genealogies of human experience must be build.