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Hogan's Heroes And The Holocaust
Meryl Yourish

by Meryl Yourish, January 9, 2007

5 comments

Hogan's HeroesHogan's HeroesSomething funny happened on the way to researching my last post. I discovered that two of the regular cast members fled the Nazis in the 1930's, and one of them is a survivor of Buchenwald.

Werner Klemperer's (Col. Klink) father was Jewish. Otto Klemperer, the famous conductor and composer, fled Germany in 1933 and sent for his wife and children after securing a job. Werner went on to play various Nazis in film, perhaps most notably in Judgment at Nuremberg. He only agreed to play Klink if the colonerl was portrayed as a fool who was constantly outwitted by the prisoners.

John Banner (Sgt. Schulz) had the good fortune to be out of his native Vienna on tour during the Anschluss. He made his way to America and became an actor, portraying Nazis during the war. All of his relatives in Austria died in concentration camps.

Robert Clary (Cpl. LeBeau) was deported to Buchenwald at age 16, with 12 other members of his family. He was the only survivor, however, some of his siblings remained in France. He wore long sleeves on the show to cover up his tattoo. In 1980, he discovered the need to talk about his experiences in Buchenwald and worked with the Simon Wiesenthal Center's outreach program.

One of my aunts could never see Hogan's Heroes on TV without angrily demanding we change the channel. There was nothing funny about a Nazi POW camp, she said, and she hated that Klink and Schultz were portrayed as bumbling, lovable fools. Now I wonder what she'd think if she knew that both of the actors were Jewish, and both had fled the Nazis.


Meryl Yourish

Meryl Yourish is a blogger living in Richmond, VA, after spending most of her life in northeastern NJ. She writes about Israel and Jewish issues on http://yourish.com/, the blog she started in April of 2001 (pre-Instapundit

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Anonymous

01/09/07 2:39 pm
Robert Clary on Days of Our Lives

Robert Clary played a character (Robert LeClair) on Days od our Lives

http://www.libranpoet.com/robert_clary.htm

Robert began a fourteen-year stint on the popular soap opera Days of Our Lives, from 1972-1986 and one year on Young and the Restless. It was in his role as Robert LeClair on Days that Robert played, appropriately, a survivor of the Holocaust. In one episode his character discovers a brother he thought he had lost in the Holocaust and his brother’s daughter. In an emotional scene, his character “talked about ‘The Death March’ in January 1945, when everyone started dying like mad.” For this show, Robert not only turned in a touching performance, but was instrumental in giving the head writer “a lot of hints on the Holocaust.”

Interestingly, the character of the brother and his daughter were Orthodox Jews. The Robert LeClair character actually changed on the show from someone living in denial (and antireligious) to someone who actively spoke about it in public. If I recall the news from that time, this growth was actually paralleled by his growth in real life. However, one to have to read his autobiography in order to see if this "memory" is true or not.


Joey Kurtzman

Joey Kurtzman

01/09/07 4:00 pm
Comments: 509
Friends: 169
Days ain't what it used to be

Wow. And today all they can come up with is Bo and Hope's endless waffling about whether to get back together. I'm almost at the point of no longer Tivo'ing it. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!



Anonymous

01/09/07 5:12 pm
Robert Clary

I seem to remember that Robert Clary narrated a documentary about approximately one thousand Jews who were given refuge during World War II in a camp in Oswego, NY.

(from Rahel)


Anonymous

01/09/07 5:19 pm
Klemperer, Banner, Slezak, Lorre

were all were regulars on the Berlin and Vienna stages. Banner also had a featured role in "The Blue Angel," the film which made Marlene Dietrich (another German refugee) a star. Walter Slezak and Klemperer (then a child) both appear in "M," which made Peter Lorre a star for his portrayal of a child molester-murderer.

Some of the Jewish refugees from Europe who found homes in the US entertainment industry were

Billy Wilder (film director and producer)
Conrad Veidt (who usually played Nazis in film - e.g., Casablanca)
Luise Rainier and her husband Bertholt Brecht
Fritz Freleng ("Pink Panther" animator)

They were lucky. They got out in time. Most did not. For example, the touring show of midgets cast as Munchkins in "The Wizard of Oz" was heavily Jewish. They went back to Germany after filming wrapped. They were all deported and gassed.

chsw


Anonymous

01/12/07 2:27 pm
Hogan's Heroes

Great post! I blogged about this topic a while back too. You can also list General Burkhalter as a Jewish actor playing a German character on the show. And one of the show's creators was one Bernard Fein, presumably Jewish as well. Bottom line, the show was mocking of Germans, much as Mel Brooks' "The Producers" did.