Posted on 11/17/2022 2:46:28 PM PST by gitmo
But, all along — and long after the series had gone into syndication, and years of reruns — there was a hidden joke in “Hogan’s Heroes.”
It was simply this. Many of its characters were played by Jewish refugees from the Nazis.
Consider:
Colonel Wilhelm Klink, the commandant of the stalag. His chief characteristics: vanity, insecurity, paranoia, and basically inept, in constant fear of being sent to the Russian front. He was played by Werner Klemperer, a veteran German entertainer. He was born into a family that was part of German-Jewish cultural aristocracy. His father was the renowned conductor Otto Klemperer, who had converted to Catholicism, but later returned to Judaism. Werner’s first cousin was the famous diarist, Victor Klemperer, who chronicled the final, tragic days of Germany Jewry.
Sergeant Hanz Schultz, the camp’s first sergeant. He was clumsy, cowardly, and easily bribed. His catchphrase: “I know notting.” He was played by John Banner, a Jewish refugee from Austro-Hungary. He lost many family members in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, he was often type cast as a Nazi. He played Nazi official Rudolph Hoss in the 1961 film “Operation Eichmann,” in which Werner Klemperer played Eichmann.
General Albert Hans Burkhalter, Klink’s superior officer. He was played by Leon Askin, nee Aschkenazy — a Viennese Jew whose parents perished in Treblinka.
Finally, Corporal LeBeau, played by Robert Clary. Clary was born in France, the youngest of fourteen children — ten of whom perished in the Holocaust. At the age of sixteen, he was deported to the concentration camp at Ottmuth, and then to Buchenwald, from where he was liberated in 1945. His other family members died in Auschwitz. He told his life story in his autobiography, “From the Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes: The Autobiography of Robert Clary.”
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I don’t consider these facts a joke about Hogans Hero’s. Bad title. I figure During those years of production many survivors where still alive. and it was very well known that Klemperer’s dad was a conductor.
Werner Klemperer was a subscriber to the L.A. Philharmonic concerts. I would run across him quite a bit in the 1970s.
That exact line came to me as I was drafting my post.
Off by one...B17.
My maternal grandfather was in the Austrian-Hungarain Army in WW1. He was a POW on the Italian front. He told me that they would sneak out of the camp at night to beg for food and sneak back in before the morning. Having grown up watching Hogan’s Heroes, I asked him since he escaped, why did he go back? “There was nowhere to go.”
I took a tour through Auschwitz in the 80’s, I couldn’t finish the tour. I was so sickened, and I could still feel the evil and tension as well as the sorrow. I’ll never forget it.
I saw that exact scenario on a movie. Can’t remember the name of it.
I had an uncle in 3rd Army that liberated one of these camps. He barely spoke of his experiences but did say to me, don’t let the leftist or the white power nuts tell you it didn’t happen, I saw it with my own eyes what they did to the Jews, it was real and it was God awful!
He respected the Wehrmacht but absolutely hated the SS who he said you just kill the SOB’s immediately.
Pretty much what my dad related to me.
My late uncle was a US Army WWII war crimes investigator and saw several of the camps. He had a box of personal photographs of the atrocities. Why he was allowed to keep them I have no idea! Maybe the authorities didn’t know. It was his own personal box of horror! I don’t know what my cousins did with it after his death.
It’s one of the reasons I have a special loathing for antisemites who claim it didn’t happen! Eisenhower told everyone to document it. His quote went something like this - record everything because some SOB will later claim it never happened!
Actually, those were Ike’s exact words.
My memory is better then I thought!
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