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Robert Clary was a French-born actor and singer who rose to fame on American television playing a French soldier captured by the Nazis in Hogan’s Heroes. The sitcom also starred Bob Crane, Richard Dawson, and Werner Klemperer. The unlikely comedy takes place in a Nazi-controlled prisoner-of-war camp, where the POWs, who continue to support the Allied powers to win the war, constantly outwit their captors. Coincidentally, a young Clary had seen firsthand the tragedy of war. He and his family were prisoners in concentration camps, and most of his relatives did not survive.

Robert Clary spent nearly 3 years in concentration camps

Robert Clary, Hogan's Heroes actor
Robert Clary as Corporal Louis LeBeau in an episode of ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ in 1965 | CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

In September 1942, when Clary was only 16, he was deported from Paris. He and 12 family members were sent to Nazi concentration camps. Clary spent two and a half years in various camps, including Blachhammer, Ottmuth, Gross-Rosen, and Buchenwald.

Like many other Jewish prisoners, Clary endured forced labor, disease, and starvation. Most of the time, he was forced to dig trenches or work in a shoe factory.

“I was young, so they put me to work in a factory making 4,000 wooden shoe heels a day,” he told Yahoo! News in 2016. “The noise was unbelievable, so I sang while I worked, and that’s how I survived.”

When his captors learned that he could sing, he would perform for them, earning him more food to eat.

“At one camp, we would perform every second Sunday while the SS came and watched,” he said.

Robert Clary was only 1 of a few family members to survive the concentration camps

Not until American soldiers had freed him from Buchenwald in April 1945 did Robert Clary learn of his relatives’ fate. His parents and 10 of his 13 siblings had been sent to Auschwitz and died during the Holocaust, The New York Times reported. He and three siblings had evaded recapture in Paris and survived in occupied France throughout the rest of the war.

Even through tragedy, Clary considered himself fortunate. According to CNN, he said of his time in concentration camps: “I was one of the lucky ones. First of all, because I survived. Secondly, because I was in camps that were not as atrocious as others. I did not suffer. I did not work as hard as people were working in salt mines on quarries. I was never tortured. I was never really beaten. I was never hanged. But I saw all these things.”

It took Clary 36 years to find the courage to speak about his experiences during the war. He traveled throughout North America to tell his story and ensure no one would forget the war’s atrocities.

He went on to become a TV actor

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After the war, Robert Clary found work in entertainment, which he had known since he was 12 when his first job was singing on the radio in France, according to Capitol Records. He started with singing, but after he appeared in a comedy skit on The Ed Wynn Show, he stood out for his comedic timing. His talents led to more TV guest spots, Broadway parts, and his best-known role: Corporal Louis LeBeau on Hogan’s Heroes.

Clary didn’t have an issue with playing the part despite his real-life experience as a prisoner. He saw little parallels between his time in concentration camps and the fictional POW camp.

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