Talent Luck Courage: Hogan’s Heroes’ Robert Clary & his Sister Nicole Holland Their World War II Survival & Impact on the Second Generation 

For many years, most people, including my sister and myself, were unaware that our mother’s escape from Paris, France was necessitated by her being Jewish.

Until the latter part of his career, most fans were unaware that Robert Clary was a Holocaust survivor who had spent 31 months in concentration camps.

As Jews in Paris in the early 1940s, my family endured the entire spectrum of experiences resulting from Nazi occupation. Some members hid in their home towns without ever being arrested. Some were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

Fortunately for her, my mother managed to escape and join the French Resistance in order to do her part to remove the menace to her normal existence.

My Uncle Robert was not as lucky, but survived 31 months in 4 different concentration camps.

Their biographies, “One of the Lucky Ones” and “From the Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes” give detailed accounts of their wartime experiences. Their survival took great courage and luck combined with a dash of talent in order to survive.

Their greatest legacy, however, is not only learned by reading or hearing of their wartime experiences, but also by understanding how they refused to let their experiences keep them from living full, satisfying lives. In addition to enjoying life after the war, they both used their survival to help others make the most of their lives.

“Talent Luck Courage” highlights their stories and explains how these two courageous individuals influenced my sister and me, the second generation of Holocaust survivors, to seek adventures of our own.

One Of The Lucky Ones

Born Cipa Widerman into a large Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland in November of 1922, Nicole Holland immigrated at the age of six months with her mother and sisters to Paris, France where they joined her father and brothers.  Her happy childhood was spent in an apartment house built for large families like hers on Ile St. Louis in the middle of Paris with summers at Colleville, later known as Omaha Beach. Once the Nazis invaded France, and more specifically Paris, her life changed drastically.  As a Jewish indeterminee or a person with no nationality, Nicole was included on the list of the first round-ups of Jews.  Barely missing arrest, she escaped to unoccupied France and took on a new, non-Jewish identity.  As a naïve teenager, she was thrust from the comfort of a loving home and forced to survive on her own in several strange cities. Nicole managed to find work and friends and along the way became a member of the French Underground in order to do whatever she could to rid France of the Nazi invaders.  When the Germans began retreating, she even joined the Underground fighters she had supplied with messages and arms as the only woman fighting with them as liberators. Upon her return to Paris, she joined the CAVF, an organization of the former French Underground.  Through this job, she searched for lost family members and a way to build a future without hatred, fear, and the devastation of war.  One of the Lucky Ones is the story of her amazing journey.

One Of The Lucky Ones, Biography of Nicole Holland

Both Nicole Holland and her younger brother Robert Clary (of “Hogan’s Heroes”) raved about their childhood in their four-room apartment on Ile St. Louis in Paris, France. Though not wealthy, their youth seemed rich as it was filled with love, laughter, and the joy they experienced with all their friends from Rue Des Deux Ponts. Unfortunately for them, that happy youth was halted when the Germans invaded Paris, demanded they be labeled “Juif” and denied them many of life’s former pleasures, like going to the movies.

By 1942 their stories veered into totally different directions. Along with members of their immediate family, Robert was arrested and sent in a cattle car to concentration camps. For thirty-one months, he survived incarceration in four different concentration camps. The sole survivor of the thirteen members of their immediate family incarcerated, Robert told of his survival and his life after the war in his biography, FROM THE HOLOCAUST TO HOGAN’S HEROES.

Unlike Robert and their family who were arrested, Nicole escaped from Paris to the south of France where she hid in the open as a Catholic girl named Pierrette Nicodem. Eventually, she joined the Forces Francaises de L’interieur—the French Underground—first as a courier and then joining the men to whom she’d supplied messages, guns, and ammunition as they traveled north liberating towns along the way.

Like Robert, Nicole’s indomitable spirit helped her survive the war and create a future without hatred, fear, and the devastation of war. ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES is Nicole’s inspirational journey through a life she never expected.