From the Holocaust to Hogan's Heroes by Robert Clary

“They write books and articles in magazines denying the Holocaust, making a mockery of the 6 million Jews - including a million and a half children - who died in the gas chambers and ovens,” he told The Associated Press in a 1985 interview.

The forearms of concentration camp prisoners were tattooed with identification numbers, with A5714 to be Clary’s lifelong mark. He remained publicly silent about his wartime experience until 1980 when, Clary said, he was provoked to speak out by those who denied or diminished the orchestrated effort by Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews.Ī documentary about Clary’s childhood and years of horror at Nazi hands, “Robert Clary, A5714: A Memoir of Liberation,” was released in 1985. “I loved to go to the theater at quarter of 8, put the stage makeup on and entertain,” he said in a 2014 interview. He considered musical theater the highlight of his career. More: 101-year-old ex-guard from Nazi camp convicted by German court as accessory to 3,500 murdersĬlary began his career as a nightclub singer and appeared on stage in musicals including “Irma La Douce” and “Cabaret.” After “Hogan’s Heroes,” Clary’s TV work included the soap operas “The Young and the Restless,” “Days of Our Lives” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.” Veteran TV actor Robert Hogan, who starred in 'The Wire,' 'Law & Order,' 'Peyton Place,' dies at 87 Werner Klemperer and John Banner, who played their captors, both were European Jews who fled Nazi persecution before the war. Louis LeBeau.Ĭlary was the last surviving original star of the sitcom that included Bob Crane, Richard Dawson, Larry Hovis and Ivan Dixon as the prisoners. The 5-foot-1 Clary sported a beret and a sardonic smile as Cpl. “Hogan’s Heroes,” in which Allied soldiers in a POW camp bested their clownish German army captors with espionage schemes, played the war strictly for laughs during its 1965-71 run. “He didn’t let hate overcome the beauty in this world.” When he recounted his life to students, he told them, “Don’t ever hate,” Hancock said. He tried to spread that joy to others through his singing and his dancing and his painting.” “He never let them take the joy out of his life. “He never let those horrors defeat him,” Hancock said of Clary’s wartime experience as a youth. He was 96.Ĭlary died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in the Los Angeles area, niece Brenda Hancock said Thursday. LOS ANGELES - Robert Clary, a French-born survivor of Nazi concentration camps during World War II who played a feisty prisoner of war in the improbable 1960s sitcom 'Hogan’s Heroes,' has died.

From the Holocaust to Hogan's Heroes by Robert Clary