Robert Clary, a French-born survivor of Nazi concentration camps who later played a feisty prisoner of war in the unlikely 1960s sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, died on November 16, 2022, at his home in Beverly Hills, California. He was 96.
Clary was the last surviving original cast member of the series, which also starred Bob Crane, Richard Dawson, Larry Hovis, and Ivan Dixon as the Allied prisoners. Their captors were portrayed by Werner Klemperer and John Banner, both European Jews who had fled Nazi persecution before the war.
For decades, Clary said nothing publicly about his wartime experience. That changed in 1980, when he decided to speak out after seeing Holocaust deniers attempt to diminish or erase the truth of Nazi crimes. His silence broke with painful clarity: twelve members of his immediate family — his parents and ten siblings — had been murdered. Clary himself was deported to Buchenwald, where he was liberated on April 11, 1945. He was the only member of his family to survive.
Beyond his acting career, Clary committed himself to Holocaust remembrance. Beginning in 1980, he spoke at high schools and community groups, participated in survivor gatherings in Jerusalem, volunteered with the Museum of Tolerance, and became deeply involved with the USC Shoah Foundation. He was among the first 100 survivors interviewed for their archive and later conducted 75 interviews himself, ensuring that others’ stories would be preserved.
Hogan’s Heroes aired on CBS from 1965 to 1971, running for six seasons and 168 episodes. It remains the longest-running American sitcom set against the backdrop of World War II.
Unrealistic as it was, I loved the show. It made me laugh then, and it still makes me laugh today. The series is available on Amazon Prime.