Hogan’s Heroes

My daughter was watching some reruns of Hogan’s Heroes the other night while wrapping Christmas gifts. The next day we were talking about that and wondered why those who played German soldiers on that show were so willing to portray them as such losers. But it turns out that was a fairly expected role for them, given their own personal backgrounds. Here are the characters we refer to and a quick summary of their personal history:

·        Colonel Wilhelm Klink – Otto Klemperer – born into a Jewish family in 1920 in Germany, the family left Germany for the US in 1933 when Otto was a teenager. He served in the US Army in WWII, and was stationed in Hawaii.

·        Sergeant Hans Schultz – John Banner – born in 1910 to Jewish parents in Austria-Hungary (now part of Ukraine). In 1938, while in Switzerland, Hitler annexed Austria and Banner fled to the US. In WWII he served in the US Army Air Forces as a supply sergeant. John lost a lot of his family to the Holocaust.

·        General Albert Hans Burkhalter – Leon Askin – born in 1907 to a Jewish family in Vienna. He fled to the US in 1940 after having been beaten by the Nazis. His parents were murdered in the Treblinka death camp. Served in WWII as a sergeant in the US Army Air Forces.

·        Major Wolfgang Hochstetter – Howard Caine – born in Tennessee in 1926 to a Jewish family. Served in the US Navy during WWII.

·        Corporal Karl Langenscheidt – Jon Cedar – born in Detroit in 1931, enlisted in the US military and served in Italy during the Korean War.

·        Fraulein Helga – Cynthia Lynn (born Zinta Valda Ziemelis) – born in Latvia in 1937, fled prior to the Soviet re-occupation in 1944 during WWII and came to the US in 1950. Only appeared in first season.

Of these individuals, four were Jewish, and three of them had been born in Germany/Austria but came to the US. All five of the men had prior experience in the US military during WWII. But there is one other cast member who should be mentioned here:

·        Corporal Louis LeBeau – Robert Clary – bon in 1926 in Paris, France as the youngest of 14 children in a Jewish family. Deported to a Nazi concentration camp where he managed to survive because he sang to an audience of SS soldiers to entertain them on Sundays. When he was liberated from Buchenwald in 1945, he found that 12 other members of his family had been murdered in Auschwitz. However, three of his siblings had not been taken away and survived the Nazi occupation of France. He always wore long sleeves on the show to cover up the tattoo on his forearm.

There were three other individuals who had parts where they played Germans, but all of them were American citizens:

·        Fraulein Hilda – Patricia Annette Olson (stage name Sigrid Valdis) – married Bob Crane in 1970 on the show’s set

·        Frau Gertrude Linkmeyer – Kathleen Freeman – played the part of General Burkhalter’s sister

·        Captain Fritz/Feliz Gruber – Dick Wilson – only appeared in a few episodes. Born in England, but lived in Canada and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force in WWII. Became an American citizen in 1954.