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Robert Clary, the French-born World War II Nazi concentration camp survivor who played a pugnacious prisoner of war on the improbable 1960s sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, has died at the age of 96.
Clary died of natural causes Wednesday night at his home in Beverly Hills, California, niece Brenda Hancock said.
“He never let those fears get the better of him,” Ms. Hancock said of Clary’s wartime experiences as a young man.
“He never let them take away the joy in his life. He tried to spread that joy to other people through his singing, his dancing and his painting.”
When he tells students about his life, he tells them to “never hate,” Ms. Hancock said.
“He didn’t let hate overcome the beauty of this world.”
Hogan’s heroes, Allied soldiers in a prisoner-of-war camp who use espionage schemes to outwit their zany German army captives, played 1965-71 in a war that was all about laughs.
The 5-foot-1 Clary wears a beret and a sarcastic smile like Corporal Cpl Louis LeBeau.
Clary is the last surviving original star of the sitcom, which included Bob Kline, Richard Dawson, Larry Howes and Evan Dixon as prisoners.
Werner Klemperer and John Banner, who played their captors, were both European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution before the war.
Clary began her career as a nightclub singer and appeared on stage in musicals including Irma La Douce and Cabaret.
After Hogan’s Heroes, Clary’s television credits include the soaps “The Young and the Restless”, “Days of Our Lives” and “The Bold and the Beautiful”.
He considers musical theater to be the highlight of his career. “I like to go to the theater at a quarter past eight, put on stage makeup and have fun,” he said in a 2014 interview.
He remained silent about his wartime experiences until 1980, when, Clary said, he was outraged by those who denied or undercut Nazi Germany’s orchestrated efforts to exterminate the Jews.
In 1985, Robert Clary released a documentary about Clary’s childhood and horrific years at the hands of the Nazis, A5714: Memoirs of Liberation. Camp inmates had their identification numbers tattooed on their forearms, A5714, the mark of Clary’s life.
“They wrote books and articles in magazines denying the Holocaust, mocking the six million Jews who died in the gas chambers and ovens — including 1.5 million children,” he told the Associated Press in 1985.
Clary wrote in a biography posted on his website that 12 members of his immediate family, his parents and 10 siblings were killed under the Nazis.
In 1997, he was one of dozens of Holocaust survivors whose portraits and stories were included in photographer Nick Del Calzo’s book, “The Triumphant Spirit.”
“I implore the next generation not to do what people have done for centuries — hate people because of their skin, the shape of their eyes or their religious preferences,” Clary said in an interview at the time.
After retiring from acting, Clary was healthy and busy with family, friends and painting.
The actor was born in Paris in March 1926 to Robert Widerman, the youngest of 14 children. He was 16 when he and most of his family were taken by the Nazis.
In the documentary, Clary recalls a happy childhood until he and his family were forced from their apartment in Paris and packed into an overcrowded cattle cart to a concentration camp.
“No one knew where we were going,” Clary said. “We’re not human anymore.”
After 31 months in several concentration camps, he was liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp by American troops. Clary said his youth and ability to work kept him alive.
After returning to Paris, reunited with her two sisters who had escaped the death camps, Clary became a singer and recorded songs that became popular in the United States.
After coming to America in 1949, he moved from club dates and recordings to Broadway musicals, including 1952’s New Faces, and then to movies. His credits include Thief in Damascus in 1952, A New Kind of Love in 1963 and The Hindenburg in 1975.
Despite his family’s devastating war experience, he’s not disturbed by Hogan’s heroic comedy.
“It’s completely different. I know their (prisoners of war) lives are terrible, but compared to concentration camps and gas chambers, it’s like a vacation.”
Clary married Natalie Cantor, daughter of singer and actor Eddie Cantor, in 1965. She died in 1997.
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