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November 17 (Reuters) – Robert Clary, a Paris-born actor and singer who survived 31 months in Nazi concentration camps but later had no qualms about playing his role in “Hogan’s Heroes,” an American comedy set in World War II Germany. Two POW campers, dead at age 96, according to media reports.
Clary, who played strudel-baking French Corporal Louis Lebeau on “Hogan’s Heroes” during its six-season run from 1965 to 1971, died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, his grandson told The Hollywood Reporter.
Clary was 16 years old in September 1942 when she was deported from Paris to Nazi concentration camps with 12 other members of her Jewish family. He was the only survivor. Clary spent 2-1/2 years in the concentration camps of Ottmuth, Blachhammer, Gross-Rosen and Buchenwald, enduring hunger, disease and forced labor.
He was freed when American forces liberated Buchenwald in April 1945, but then learned that members of his family, including his parents, had died in the Holocaust.
It was ironic that Clary gained her greatest fame for performing comedy on a TV show set in a German POW camp. He said he wasn’t worried about being on a show that made fun of the Nazis.
His character was one of the prisoners-of-war who defeated the German prison guards and carried out espionage and sabotage to help the Allied cause.
“The show was a satire set in a prisoner of war camp, where the conditions were unpleasant but not comparable to a concentration camp, and it had nothing to do with Jews,” Clary told the Jerusalem Post in 2002.
“Showbiz is like a roller coaster and you take what roles you’re given,” added Clary.
“Hogan’s Heroes” stars Bob Crane as American Colonel Robert Hogan, with Richard Dawson, Larry Hovis and Ivan Dixon playing other POWs. The main German characters were the camp commander Colonel Klink, played by Werner Klemperer, and the humble guard Sergeant Schultz, played by John Banner. Both actors were Jewish and had fled Europe because of the Nazis.
Clary’s character was known for her burgundy beret and her cooking skills, which were used to distract the German officers with delicious food while the other POWs were on a rampage.
“Hogan’s Heroes” was popular with TV viewers during its run on the CBS network and for decades afterward in the syndicate even though some critics considered it bad.
‘ONE OF THE GENTLEMEN’
Clary was born Robert Max Widerman on March 1, 1926, the youngest of 14 children of his Polish father from two marriages. He became a professional musician when he was a teenager.
In the camps set up by the Nazis to exterminate European Jews, he was tattooed with the number A-5714 and forced to dig trenches, work in a shoe factory and sing to his captors. Singing earned her a few meals, Clary said.
“I was one of the lucky ones,” he told the Asbury Park, New Jersey, Press in 2002. “First, because I survived. Second, because I was in camps that weren’t as bad as others. I didn’t suffer. I didn’t work as hard as the people who worked in the salt mines in the quarries. I wasn’t tortured. I wasn’t really beaten. I wasn’t hanged. But I saw all these things.
After the war, Clary’s singing career began in France. He immigrated to the United States in 1949 and comedian Eddie Cantor offered him an opportunity to appear on national television. Clary later married Cantor’s daughter Natalie.
Clary performed on stage, in small film roles and in guest spots on TV before being cast in “Hogan’s Heroes.” His major film role was in director Robert Wise’s “The Hindenburg” (1975) starring George C. Scott.
Alarm over people trying to deny the Holocaust prompted Clary in 1980 to break her reclusive silence about her experiences. He spent years going to schools in the United States and Canada to speak about the Holocaust. He also wrote an autobiography, “From the Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes.”
“We have to learn from history,” Clary told the Reno Gazette-Journal in 2002, “which we don’t have.”
Reporting and writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Bill Trott
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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