[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.

In the following two years, despite the Nazi accession to power and the subsequent reinforcement of Paragraph 175, they led a happy life, befriending other male homosexuals, and would often take trips locally, or further away, to visit gay meeting places, such as the "New York" Café in Leipzig.

From a legal and technical point of view, he was considered a Czechoslovak citizen with a criminal record and, as such, treated as persona non grata in Nazi Germany, and made to leave the country.

Because his parents had not taught him Czech, he left for what was technically his country, but opted to settle in the German-speaking region of Sudetenland, the westernmost province of Czechoslovakia, bordering on Germany.

In April 1941, he was imprisoned again on suspicion of homosexual activities, and later charged by a court in the town of Eger (today Cheb in the Czech Republic), following a new trial.

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 2010, Rudolf Brazda took part in Mulhouse in the unveiling of a plaque in memory of Pierre Seel and others who were deported because of their homosexuality[10] and was a guest of honour at a remembrance ceremony at Buchenwald.

Brazda was determined to continue speaking out about his past,[13] in the hope that younger generations remain vigilant in the face of present-day behaviour and thought patterns similar to those which led to the persecutions endured by homosexuals during the Nazi era.

[15] Brazda supported research work by the French citizens group Les « Oublié(e)s » de la Mémoire who made him an honorary member on 3 October 2008.

A longer, more scholarly German-language biography of Brazda was published later: "Das Glück kam immer zu mir": Rudolf Brazda—Das Überleben eines Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich by Alexander Zinn (Campus Verlag, 2011).

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.

Among those releasing statements were Marc Laffineur, secretary of state for the Ministry of Defense and Veterans Affairs; the Socialist Party (France); Ian Brossat, president of the French Communist Party/Left Party (France) caucus of the Paris City Council; Jean-Luc Romero, president of Elus Locaux Contre le Sida (Local Elected Officials Against AIDS); the AIDS activist organization ACT UP–Paris; Les Oubli-é-es de la Mémoire; and the Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle, a national French association that commemorates the homosexual victims of Nazi persecution.

On 28 September 2011, a national tribute ceremony to Rudolf was organised by Les « Oublié(e)s » de la Mémoire and patroned by Mr. Marc Laffineur, Secretary of State for Defence and Veterans.

It was yet another opportunity to recall that in the last three years of his life, Rudolf had become a unique witness, and that remembering homosexual deportation today remains essential in the struggle against discriminations.