From the Holocaust to Hogan's Heroes: The Autobiography of Robert Clary (HC, 2002, autographed, $9)
This is a book from my own collection. I had it signed at a local book festival.
I remember Hogan's Heroes with fondness. (Back in those days the whole family sat and watched TV together in the evenings. Was it better back then, or just different?)
When Robert Clary played the part of Corporal Louis Lebeau, people were amazed to find he was a Nazi concentration camp survivor. How, people asked, could he be part of a TV show that made fun of Nazis, especially after losing his parents, two sisters, two half-sisters, and two nephews in the Holocaust! His response, "I had to explain that it was about prisoners of war in a stalag, not a concentration camp, and although I did not want to diminish what soldiers went through during their internments, it was like night and day from what people endured in concentration camps... I was an actor who was asked to play the part of a French corporal prisoner of war and not a little Jew in [a] concentration camp, and I never felt uncomfortable playing Louis Lebeau."
Look for this book on the new non-fiction table. Avail. 6/20. (L-bio)
