Robert Clary, a French-born survivor of Nazi focus camps throughout World Battle II who performed a feisty prisoner of warfare within the unbelievable Sixties hit sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes,” has died at his dwelling in Beverly Hills.

Clary died Wednesday of pure causes, his niece, Brenda Hancock, mentioned. He was 96.

“He by no means let these horrors defeat him,” Hancock mentioned of Clary’s wartime experiences as a youth. “He by no means allow them to take the enjoyment out of his life. He tried to unfold that pleasure to others by his singing and his dancing and his portray.”

When he recounted his life to college students, Clary informed them, “Don’t ever hate,” Hancock mentioned. “He didn’t let hate overcome the sweetness on this world.”

“Hogan’s Heroes,” by which Allied troopers in a POW camp bested their clownish German overseers with espionage schemes, performed the warfare strictly for laughs throughout its 1965-71 run. The 5-foot-1 Clary sported a beret and a sardonic smile as French Cpl. Louis LeBeau.

Clary was the final surviving authentic star of the sitcom that included Bob Crane, Richard Dawson, Larry Hovis and Ivan Dixon because the prisoners. Werner Klemperer and John Banner, who performed their captors, each have been European Jews who had fled Nazi persecution earlier than the warfare.

Clary started his profession as a nightclub singer and appeared on stage in musicals together with “Irma La Douce” and “Cabaret.” After “Hogan’s Heroes,” Clary’s TV work included the cleaning soap operas “The Younger and the Stressed,” “Days of Our Lives” and “The Daring and the Stunning.”

He thought-about musical theater the spotlight of his profession. “I cherished to go to the theater at quarter of eight, put the stage make-up on and entertain,” he mentioned in a 2014 interview.

He remained publicly silent about his wartime expertise till 1980, when, Clary mentioned, he was provoked to talk out by those that denied or sought to decrease the orchestrated effort by Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews.

A documentary about Clary’s childhood and years of horror at Nazi fingers, “Robert Clary, A5714: A Memoir of Liberation,” was launched in 1985. Clary was tattooed with the alphanumeric A5714 as a focus camp prisoner.

“They write books and articles in magazines denying the Holocaust, making a mockery of the 6 million Jews — together with one million and a half youngsters — who died within the gasoline chambers and ovens,” he informed the Related Press in a 1985 interview.

Twelve of his speedy relations — his mother and father and 10 siblings — have been killed underneath the Nazis, Clary wrote in a biography posted on his web site.

In 1997, he was amongst dozens of Holocaust survivors whose portraits and tales have been included in “The Triumphant Spirit,” a guide by photographer Nick Del Calzo.

“I urge the subsequent era to not do what individuals have finished for hundreds of years — hate others due to their pores and skin, form of their eyes, or non secular choice,” Clary mentioned in an interview on the time.

Retired from performing, Clary remained in good well being and busy together with his household, associates and his portray.

The actor, born Robert Widerman in Paris in March 1926 was the youngest of 14 youngsters. He was 16 when he and most of his household have been taken by the Nazis.

Within the documentary, Clary recalled a cheerful childhood till he and his household have been compelled from their Paris condominium and put right into a crowded cattle automobile that carried them to focus camps.

“No one knew the place we have been going,” Clary mentioned. “We weren’t human beings anymore.”

After 31 months in captivity in a number of focus camps, he was liberated from the Buchenwald demise camp by American troops. His youth and talent to work had stored him alive, Clary mentioned.

Returning to Paris, the place he was reunited with two older sisters who had averted the demise camps, Clary labored as a singer and recorded songs that grew to become standard in America.

After coming to america in 1949, he moved from membership dates and recording to Broadway musicals, together with “New Faces of 1952,” after which to films. He appeared in movies together with 1952’s “Thief of Damascus,” “A New Type of Love” in 1963 and “The Hindenburg” in 1975.

He didn’t really feel uneasy concerning the comedy on “Hogan’s Heroes” regardless of the tragedy of his household’s devastating warfare expertise. In Stalag 13, Hogan’s staff of prisoners at all times outwitted the bumbling Germans.

“True, they have been in a camp, however they weren’t handled the identical as a focus camp,” he informed the Los Angeles Instances in 2013. “It was a stalag. You acquired letters and packages.”

After the sequence went off the air, he remained near the opposite two different actors on the sequence whose lives had been upended by the Nazis — German-born Klemperer, who gained Emmys because the officious Col. Klink, and the Austrian-born Banner, who performed the befuddled Sgt. Schultz. Each have been Jews who had fled the Nazis earlier than the outbreak of the warfare. “However John misplaced a whole lot of his household,” mentioned Clary.

Clary married Natalie Cantor, the daughter of singer-actor Eddie Cantor, in 1965. She died in 1997.

A Instances employees author contributed to this story.