Quote:
Originally Posted by sc_rufctr
I was never OK with Mel Brooks efforts either. (& he's a Jew)
Also, did you know Robert Clary from Hogans Hero's was a Jew? (Corporal LeBeau)
Early life and Holocaust survival
Born in 1926 in Paris, France, Clary was the youngest of 14 children. At the age of twelve, he began a career singing professionally on French radio and also studied art at the Paris Drawing School. In 1942, because he was Jewish, he was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Ottmuth, in Upper Silesia (now Poland). He was tattooed with the identification "A5714" on his left forearm. He was later sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.
I don't understand how they're OK with it but in their own way they made a statement about the Nazis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Clary |
All of the major German characters in Hogans Heros were Jews. In total, five major cast members were Jewish. Four survived the Holocaust.
1)La Beau
Le Beau never wore short sleeves.
In 1942, Clary would find himself in the Buchenwald concentration camp along with most of his family. He still has the number A-5714 tattooed to his arm. His parents and four siblings, as well a numerous other family members, would be tragically murdered by the Nazis before the occupation of Germany finally put a stop to the systematic killing.
***
Clary would not talk about the Holocaust for 36 years, and then only because of anger over those who were denying the event. He would begin lecturing about the Holocaust in the early 1980's, to great effect. Robert was in the made-for-television Holocaust film, Remembrance of Love, with Kirk Douglas in 1982 and in 1984 starred in the acclaimed ' Robert Clary A5714: A Memoir of Liberation about his Holocaust experiences.
2) Colonel Klink
Thirteen-year-old Werner Klemperer witnessed some of the violence, and he would always remember the SA rioting in the streets of Berlin; the smell of fear in the air. After Hitler's thugs commandeered the Kroll for their own insidious uses, and the illustrious conductor narrowly escaped two assassination attempts, he wisely fled to Switzerland and then to Vienna, his family later joining him as inconspicuously as possible. Otto Klemperer would never fully recover from injuries received during one of the failed attempts, and would remain mentally and physically unstable throughout the rest of his life. Werner would later comment on his up bringing: "It wasn't the typical childhood where you went out and played ball with your father.
When he read the script and realized that he was being offered a part a sit-com about Nazis, of all things, he at first was inclined to pass, but ultimately took the role with one condition: "I had one qualification when I took the job - if they ever wrote a segment whereby Colonel Klink would come out the hero, I would leave the show." Klemperer's publicist, Bernie Ilson, put it this way: "He insisted in all the shows that he come out as the loser. He was sensitive about that. He was worried that the commandant would come out as a winner."
3) Sgt. Schultz
John Banner was born to Jewish parents on January 28, 1910. 21-year-old Adolf Hitler, a street artist who had failed to be accepted by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, was living down the street in a Vienna men's hostel. Both were sons of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As luck would have it, when Hitler's Germany occupied Austria on March 12, 1938, Banner, a budding young actor, was on tour in Switzerland with an acting company. Accepted by the US as a political refugee, Banner soon got a gig as the Master of Ceremonies for a musical revue, learning English along the way. Unfortunately, most of his family, still trapped in Austria, would perish in Hitler's death camps.
4) General Burghalter
When Hitler took power in Germany in early 1933, Askin was unfortunate enough to have been playing a gig in Düsseldorf. He was hauled off the stage on March 11, 1933, and told not to return. On April 15, 1933, he was arrested by the SA, taken to a make-shift 'jail' and beaten senseless by an SS-Mann. In March 1938, Leon fled to Paris as Hitler rode into Vienna in triumph. Soon, France declared war on Hitler's Germany, and the young actor was eventually interned for a short time at the Meslay du Maine prison camp.
Leon emigrated to the US in 1940, and immediately began work in the theater in the US, directing as well as acting. When America. entered WW2, Askin joined the Army Air Force as a public relations officer. He also became the chief editor of the AAF weekly Orientation Digest. It was during this time that Leon Askin became a citizen of the US, and changed his name from Leon Aschkenasy to Leon Askin.
5) SS Major Wolfgang Hochstetter
In 1939, as Hitler's forces were gearing for their push in the West, Howard (Cohen) Caine and his Jewish parents moved to New York City - from Nashville, Tennessee. At the age of thirteen, he was already working toward a career in acting, losing his Southern accent and learning the first of some 32 foreign languages and dialects. When the US entered WW2, Caine joined the US Navy, serving in the Pacific Theator for the duration. After the war, he graduated Summa Cum Laude from Columbia University's school of acting and immediately hit Broadway running. In 1961, Caine was cast in a minor role in the award-winning court drama 'Judgment at Nuremberg,' based loosely on the so-called Judge's Trial of 1947, with Werner Klemperer. He would ultimately act in over 750 live and filmed TV shows and movies.
Hogan's Jews