Robert Clary said on surviving the Holocaust, “Singing, entertaining, and being in the type of good shape at my age, that’s why I survived.”
Robert Clary, a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor, and French actor has passed away.
According to his granddaughter, Kim Wright, the “Hogan’s Heroes” actor who portrayed Corporal LeBeau on the World War II-era sitcom passed away on Tuesday.
His death was not given a cause.
The final surviving member of the original main cast of the show was Clary.
Clary was the youngest of his parents’ strict Orthodox Jewish parents’ 14 children when he was born Robert Max Widerman in Paris on March 1, 1926.
He and his family were deported to Auschwitz when he was 16 years old and his parents were gassed to death.
In 2015, Clary recalled that day to the Reporter, saying, “My mother said the most astonishing thing.” She undoubtedly knew I was a brat because she said, “Behave. Behave, she commanded. Follow their instructions.'”
From his family of abducted captives, Clary was the only one to live. He spent 31 months in prison at the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald, where he worked in a factory making wooden shoe heels and had the identification number “A-5714” permanently inked on his left forearm.
He sang every other Sunday at Buchenwald for Schutzstaffel (SS) soldiers, adding that “singing, entertaining, and being in the type of excellent shape at my age, that’s why I survived.”
Clary traveled back to France in May 1945 and performed in clubs. In 1950, he made an appearance in a French comedy skit on a CBS variety show hosted by comedian Ed Wynn, four years after moving to Los Angeles to record for Capitol Records.
Ten Tall Men (1951) and Thief of Damascus are among the movies he worked on (1952). Both “New Faces of 1952” and “Seventh Heaven” (both on Broadway in 1955) had Clary as a performer.
It took Clary 36 years to publicly reveal his experiences during the Holocaust. Clary starred in “Hogan’s Heroes” on CBS from September 1965 until April 1971.
He also contributed to soap operas such as “Days of Our Lives,” “The Young and the Restless,” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
For 32 years, Clary and Natalie Cantor, the daughter of his mentor Eddie Cantor, were wed. She expired in 1997.