The Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance mourns the passing of Holocaust survivor and Hogan’s Heroes actor Robert Clary.
For four decades, Clary volunteered his time and shared his experiences during the Holocaust with thousands of young people at the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance mourns the passing of Holocaust survivor and Hogan’s Heroes actor Robert Clary.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance mourns the passing of Holocaust survivor and Hogan’s Heroes actor Robert Clary.
For four decades, Clary volunteered his time and shared his experiences during the Holocaust with thousands of young people at the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance.
Robert Clary (March 1, 1926 – November 16, 2022)
Beloved Husband, Son, Brother, Family Member, Friend – Actor, Singer, Artist, Author and Holocaust Speaker.
The producers of Transport XX to Auschwitz and Defending Holocaust History are proudly bringing to the screen, the inspirational film, From Buchenwald to Hollywood, The Robert Clary Story, about a Hollywood legend, an internationally known actor, Broadway star, singer, artist, author and Holocaust lecturer https://youtu.be/u57tBJVYKM8
WORLD PREMIERE- NOVEMBER 13, 2018
FORT LAUDERDALE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
The truly inspiring story of Holocaust Survivor, Robert Clary, born Robert Widerman, who at the age of 16 was deported from Paris along with 13 members of his family to the death camps and was the sole survivor, liberated by the U.S Army on April 11, 1945 from Buchenwald after having endured 31 months in four Nazi camps and a death march. He was discovered singing in a Paris nightclub in 1947, signed to a recording contract and brought to the United States in 1949 where he met Merv Griffin, who introduced him to Eddie and Ida Cantor and their daughter, Natalie, who he would later marry in 1965. He would become a Hollywood legend, internationally known for his portrayal of Corporal Louie LeBeau on the long running hit TV show Hogan’s Heroes, of which at age 96, he is the sole surviving original cast member, as well as for his Broadway, soap opera and movie roles, his record albums, paintings, autobiography and as an impassioned Holocaust speaker. 
October 10 to November 7, 2022
September 3 to October 5, 2022
Jiří Žák, the prisoner at Buchenwald who saved Robert Clary’s life.
Clary’s name (Robert Widerman) listed on April 19,1945 program at Buchenwald as the singer entertaining the U.S. Army troops who liberated the camp.
March 1, 2022 Robert’s 96th Birthday
For more detailed information on Robert and his family, his niece Brenda Hancock, the daughter of Nicole Holland, one of Robert’s sisters has written 4 books, which are available at Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B00DWEKOSE?_encoding=UTF8&node=283155&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=author-sidecar-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader
Little Sparrow: The Fighting Spirit of Helène in the Holocaust
Brenda’s just published story about Heléne Widerman, Robert’s sister.
Her goal for as long as she could remember was to be the best actress in all of France. Her most challenging role would be to convince the Nazis she encountered that she was just a naive, Catholic, French country girl and not the escaped Jew fighting with resistance workers to end their cruel reign.
Set during World War II when Hitler’s reign spread diabolical havoc throughout Europe, Little Sparrow is centered around Helène Widerman and her mysterious disappearance which remains unsolved. After the roundup of Jewish residents in Paris ordered by the Nazis, the last known documentation of Helène’s existence is confirmation of her boarding of Convoy 34 for the train ride from Drancy, France to Auschwitz. All requests for records of her after September 18, 1942 end the same. No records can be found to prove she even arrived at Auschwitz. All replies include the comment that the Nazis destroyed records as the Russians neared, so despite the thousands of documents that confirm those that tragically perished during this dark period of history, nothing explains Helène’s never returning home after the war.
What is known is her goal of becoming an actress, her beauty and her feisty fighting spirit, all leading to this possible explanation of what happened to Helène, a story of resistance that helps her family make peace with the past.
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.
A GROUP OF FORMER BUCHENWALD INMATES ON BOARD THE REFUGEE SHIP “MATAROA” ARRIVE IN HAIFA PORT JULY 15, 1945. CREDIT: PUBLIC DOMAIN
Lost Airmen of Buchenwald
“The Lost Airmen of Buchenwald,” a 2012 documentary on the story behind the imprisonment of 168 Allied airmen at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp during World War II.
According to film producer Mike Dorsey, the plight of the lost airmen being imprisoned at a concentration camp instead of a prisoner-of-war camp by the Nazis should never have taken place.
“The airmen were falsely accused of being ‘terrorists and saboteurs’ and subjected to conditions far worse than prisoner-of-war camps at Buchenwald. The airmen were deliberately starved and tortured in the concentration camp,” said Dorsey in his narration of the documentary.
Along with the screening of the documentary, artist Marilyn Johansen, whose paintings include images of the lost airmen, will be talking about the historical significance of the film, based on her meeting some of the airmen.
Johansen’s late father Eugene Phillips, although not one of the lost airmen, was a Prisoner of War soldier at Stalag Luft III, who met the airmen there when they were eventually transferred from Buchenwald.
“The lost airmen may have been the first allies who witnessed the Holocaust, as they were imprisoned at Buchenwald with the Jewish prisoners who were to be exterminated,” said Johansen.
The documentary features the testimony of seven airmen, who were still alive in 2011, who recalled the details of how they were captured and tortured at Buchenwald.
Their testimonies stressed how the airmen survived the extremely harsh conditions of being imprisoned at Buchenwald.
“‘Lost Airmen of Buchenwald” is a moving story and reveals so much that has been unknown for decades. The film’s strength is in the vivid testimonies of the airmen in reinforcing a tale that might still be disbelieved,” wrote film critic Carla Seaquist in “The Huffington Post.”
As revealed in the documentary, Phil Lamason, a pilot in the New Zealand Air Force whose plane was shot down by the Nazis, became senior officer of the Allied airman from Australia, Canada, England, and the United States at Buchenwald on Aug. 15, 1944. Under his command, Lamason instilled military discipline.
For several weeks, Lamason negotiated with camp authorities to have the airmen transferred to a POW Camp, but his requests were denied. At great risk, Lamason secretly got word to the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) of the Allied airmen’s captivity and, seven days before their scheduled execution, 156 of the 168 prisoners were transferred to Stalag Luft III.
The airmen testified that they survived Buchenwald due to the leadership and determination of Lamason.
Johansen enhances the screening of the documentary by sharing additional stories about the airmen and other POWs at Stalag Luft III.
She notes that there were many Jewish prisoners among the POWs at Stalag Luft III and when the prisoners were liberated by General George Patton, one of the Jewish prisoners helped in the liberation of Holocaust survivors at concentration camps.
“I had information from historian Marilyn Walton that American Irv Baum of the Air Force, once liberated from Stalag Luft III, volunteered to assist with the freeing of Holocaust prisoners at Dachau because he spoke both German and Yiddish,” said Johansen.
Baum went on to learn that 22 of his family members perished in the Holocaust.
Baum, who passed away in 2013, joined the Air Force following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. He completed many missions for the Air Force, but on March 16, 1944, Baum’s plane lost power in Paris and was captured by the Nazis.
“When I was captured, a German officer asked me if I was Hebrew. I lied saying I was not, but the officer found out the truth and gave me a beating that I never forgot,” said Baum in a 15-minute video testimony of his capture in World War II seen on www.youtube.com
When Baum was taken to Stalag Luft III, he shared how a German may have saved his life.
“A little bit of humanity surfaced. A German registering me shook his head sadly when I told him I am Jewish. I was given a form to fill in my religion. I was about to write a ‘J.’ The German took my hand and the form instantly and stopped me from writing ‘J.’ Instead, he filled in the letter ‘P’ to be officially Protestant.”
Following World War II, Baum went to the University of Miami for his degree in business. He retired from the Air Force in 1972, as a Lieutenant Colonel and lived the remainder of his life in Napa, California.
Events from April 5th to 12th, 2022 in Weimar and Nordhausen
Buchenwald Memorial
Presentation of a plaque commemorating the soldiers of the US Army
https://www.buchenwald.de/47/date/2022/02/09/save-the-date/
https://www.buchenwald.de/47/date/2022/04/11/jazz-im-konzentrationslager-buchenwald/https://www.buchenwald.de/47/date/2022/04/10/kranzniederlegung-zum-77-jahrestag-der-befreiung-ds-kz-buchenwald/https://www.buchenwald.de/47/date/2022/04/10/geschichte-bewusst-machen-ein-weg-durch-buchenwald-zum-77-jahrestag-der-befreiung/https://www.buchenwald.de/47/date/2022/04/09/kinderblock-66-return-to-buchenwald-they-survived-as-boys-they-are-coming-back-as-men/https://www.buchenwald.de/47/date/2022/04/09/1000-buchen-fuer-buchenwald/https://www.buchenwald.de/47/date/2022/04/08/uebergabe-der-reminiszenzen-von-jozef-szajna/https://www.buchenwald.de/47/date/2022/04/08/the-doctors-war-ein-biografischer-film-ueber-das-leben-von-elling-kvamme/https://www.buchenwald.de/119/