Robert Clary

From People:

“'Hogan's Heroes' Star and Auschwitz Survivor Robert Clary Dead at 96”

Robert Clary, the Auschwitz survivor who starred as Corporal LeBeau on Hogan's Heroes, has died. He was 96. The French actor died on Wednesday morning at his home in Los Angeles, his granddaughter Kim Wright told The Hollywood Reporter. A cause of death was not provided. Clary was best known for his role on the World War II sitcom Hogan's Heroes, which ran on CBS from September 1965 to April 1971.

Clary — born Robert Max Widerman — was the last living member of the show's original cast. When he was a teenager, Clary and his family were taken to Auschwitz where his parents were killed in a gas chamber on the day of their arrival, per THR. "My mother said the most remarkable thing," he recalled in a 2015 interview with THR "She said, 'Behave.' She probably knew me as a brat. She said, 'Behave. Do what they tell you to do.'" Clary was kept captive for 31 months in the Nazi concentration and death camp. He credited his love of performing with helping him to survive the experience, the outlet reported. "Singing, entertaining and being in kind of good health at my age, that's why I survived," he shared.

Clary waited nearly four decades to speak publicly about his Holocaust experience. In the 2001 memoir, From the Holocaust to Hogan's Heroes, the actor revealed how starring in the sitcom helped him to talk about his time in the concentration camp. "I had to explain that [Hogan's Heroes] was about prisoners of war in a stalag, not a concentration camp, and although I did not want to diminish what soldiers went through during their internments, it was like night and day from what people endured in concentration camps," he wrote, per THR. In addition to Hogan's Heroes, Clary starred on soap operas Days of Our Lives, The Bold and The Beautiful and The Young and the Restless. He also appeared on the big screen in Ten Tall Men and Thief of Damascus as well as on Broadway in New Faces of 1952 and Seventh Heaven.

Clary was married to Natalie Cantor, Eddie Cantor's daughter, until her death in 1997.

^ This is sad. He survived Auschwitz (where his Parents and 10 of his 13 Siblings were murdered) and Buchenwald and starred on “Hogan’s Heroes.” ^

https://people.com/tv/hogans-heroes-star-and-auschwitz-survivor-robert-clary-dead-at-96/