Robert Clary, the star of “Hogan’s Heroes” and a Holocaust survivor, died Wednesday night at his Beverly Hills home. Brenda Hancock, his niece, verified that he died of natural causes at 96.
On Thursday, Hancock said that the survivor “never let those horrors defeat him. He never let them take the joy out of his life. He tried to spread that joy to others through his singing, dancing, and painting.”
Clary, a French-born survivor of Nazi concentration camps during WWII, is probably best known to fans for his role on the hit 1960s World War II CBS sitcom as Cpl. Louis LeBeau, a feisty French prisoner of war who would frequently trade barbs with co-star Richard Dawson, who played British Cpl. Peter Newkirk.
According to the site, the actor was also known for his positive approach, which he would convey when speaking at various events.
“Don’t ever hate,” Hancock shared. “He didn’t let hate overcome the beauty in this world.”
“Hogans Heroes” aired on the network from 1965 to 1971, launching countless careers. Clary was the final survivor of a cast that featured Dawson, Bob Crane, Larry Hovis, and Ivan Dixon as fictitious POWs. Werner Klemperer and John Banner, who portrayed their captors, completed the cast.
Clary featured in various daytime soap operas, including “Days of Our Lives” and “The Bold and the Beautiful,” in addition to “Hogan’s Heroes.” He has starred on stage in musicals such as “Cabaret” and “Irma La Douce,” as well as in films such as “A New Kind of Love” and “The Hindenburg.”
According to the site, a documentary was produced in 1985 about what he went through as a boy when twelve of his family members, including his parents and ten siblings, were slain by the Nazis. “Robert Clary, A5714: A Memoir of Liberation,” it was called.
He was seized from his family at 16 and transferred to multiple concentration camps. After 31 months in captivity, American soldiers ultimately freed him from the Buchenwald death camp.
“They write books and articles in magazines denying the Holocaust, making a mockery of the 6 million Jews — including a million and a half children — who died in the gas chambers and ovens,” Clary said.
Tributes to the actor’s career flooded Twitter shortly after his death was announced.
“‘Singing, entertaining, and being in kind of good health at my age, that’s why I survive,’ [Robert Clary] In ‘Hogan’s Heroes,’ Robert Clary played a French POW. In reality, he was born to a Jewish family in France in 1926 and survived several concentration camps. He died yesterday at 96,” a tweet from the US Holocaust Museum read.