Robert Clary

Robert Clary, born Robert Max Widerman on March 1, 1926, in Paris, France, was a French-American actor and entertainer who spent the majority of his career in the United States. The youngest of fourteen children born to Polish Jewish immigrants Baila and Moishe Widerman, Clary began singing professionally on a French radio station at age twelve and studied art in Paris during his youth. He died on November 16, 2022, at his Los Angeles home at age ninety-six.

Clary's early life was shaped profoundly by the Holocaust. In 1942, he was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Ottmuth in Upper Silesia, where he was tattooed with the identification number A5714 on his left forearm. He was subsequently transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp, where he sang for SS soldiers every other Sunday, accompanied by an accordionist. Twelve members of his immediate family were sent to Auschwitz; none survived. Seven of his thirteen siblings and half-siblings died in the Holocaust. Clary was liberated from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, and upon returning to Paris, he reunited with six surviving siblings and half-siblings, along with several nieces and nephews who had evaded deportation.

Following the war, Clary resumed his entertainment career, recording songs in France beginning in 1948. Those recordings were brought to the United States on magnetic wire recording technology and subsequently released on vinyl by Capitol Records. He arrived in the United States in October 1949, and among his earliest American appearances was a French-language comedy sketch on The Ed Wynn Show in 1950. Through his acquaintance with Eddie Cantor, he secured a spot on The Colgate Comedy Hour, and in the mid-1950s he appeared on NBC's The Martha Raye Show and CBS's drama anthology series Appointment with Adventure.

Clary's Broadway career spanned from 1952 to 1958. His stage credits included Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952, the revue La Plume de Ma Tante, Seventh Heaven, and Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1968. The 1952 production was later adapted as a film in 1954, with Clary reprising his role. Also in 1952, he appeared in the film Thief of Damascus alongside Paul Henreid and Lon Chaney Jr. In 1959, he was cast in the title role of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in Edward Chodorov's play Monsieur Lautrec, a British production that ran for two weeks at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry.

In 1965, Clary was cast as Corporal Louis LeBeau on the television sitcom Hogan's Heroes, a role he held until the series concluded in 1971. Standing 155 centimeters tall, he played a French prisoner of war participating in an Allied sabotage unit operating from inside a German POW camp. Clary was the last surviving original cast member of the series. After its cancellation, he maintained close ties with fellow cast members Werner Klemperer, John Banner, and Leon Askin, all of whom had personal connections to the Holocaust. He went on to appear in recurring roles on the soap operas Days of Our Lives from 1972 to 1987 and The Bold and the Beautiful from 1990 to 1992, as well as The Young and the Restless. His film appearances during this period included The Hindenburg in 1975, in which he portrayed Joseph Späh, an actual passenger aboard the airship's final voyage, and the made-for-television film Remembrance of Love, in which he played an Auschwitz survivor.

Beyond his performing career, Clary spent years traveling across Canada and the United States to speak about the Holocaust. He was also a painter, working from photographs taken during his travels. In 1997, his portrait and testimony were included in Nick Del Calzo's book The Triumphant Spirit, a collection featuring dozens of Holocaust survivors. He published his memoir, From the Holocaust to Hogan's Heroes: The Autobiography of Robert Clary, in 2001.

In his personal life, Clary married Natalie Cantor, the daughter of Eddie Cantor, in 1965, after the two had been close friends for fifteen years. She died in 1997. The couple had no children. Clary's death in 2022 was confirmed by his niece, Brenda Hancock, who did not disclose a cause.