It’s funny how, thinking back to the 1960s sitcom, ‘Hogan’s Heroes’, I always wondered what Major Hochstetter and General Burkhalter meant when they routinely frightened Colonel Klink by threatening to send him to the “Russian front”. I am now getting the idea. It’s also amazing now to think that I grew up watching ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ a mere 25 years after the reality of death camps and POW camps.
When ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ debuted I was at first filled with youthful indignation, seeing the show as trivializing the experience of POWs like my uncle, who spent over a year in a camp in northern Germany. It turned out that my uncle loved the show, so I got an early lesson on MYOB.
And to consider that most of the German characters on the show were played by Jewish actors.