Newspaper Page Text
I
Page 8 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE November 28, 1986
Actor brings Holocaust issues to ‘Days’
by Marlene Goldman
JT A
—ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.
French-born entertainer
Robert Clary has drawn on his
Holocaust past for his role in, of
all television shows, the NBC
daytime serial “Days of Our
Lives.”
This fall. Clary resumed play
ing the affable Robert LeClair,
who recognizes on the staff of a
hospital a Nazi officer who con
ducted medical experiments in a
death camp and killed LeClair’s
mother.
LeClair helps see to it that the
ex-Nazi is captured and impri
soned and, in an emotional scene,
tells reporters of his experiences
as a Holocaust survivor.
As LeClair, Clary combines
two main aspects of his life: per
forming and his recollections of
his Holocaust experiences to
audiences throughout the United
States.
In both roles, energy bursts
from his small frame. His close-
cropped silver hair is undercut
with a dark, youthful streak that
seems to extend past his scalp.
Off stage he wears a pair of wire-
rimmed glasses, adding a touch
of respectability to his cherubic
face.
He spoke frankly during a
recent interview, leaning back
comfortably in a chair in his
hotel suite here, home since the
beginning of October. He is in
the midst of a twice-a-night,
three-month run in the show
“Irma La Deuce” at the Claridge
Hotel, and is on temporary leave
from “Days” and his home in
California.
He has played LeClair on and
off since 1972, he said, hoping
always to expand the scope of the
role. In 1980, Clary suggested to
producer A1 Rabin that LeClair
reveal that he is Jewish and sur
vived a concentration camp. His
previous silence would be attrib
uted to fear of how others would
react.
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Robert Clary
The idea was rejected, and
Clary quit the soap three years
ago because LeClair seemed to
be on a permanent back-burner.
Also in 1980, inspired by the
PBS documentary “Kitty—Re
turn to Auschwitz,” Clary broke
his own 36-year silence and began
the painful process of exposing
his Holocaust experience. “When
she (Kitty) said, ‘Thirty or 40
years from now, most survivors
will be dead,’ it made me realize
aslongas I’m alive and can talk, I
better do it,” Clary explained.
Clary subsequently asked to
discuss his experiences on the
show of his friend Merv Griffin.
“1 just talked dispassionately,"
Clary recalled. “I probably wasn’t
as glib as 1 am now and 1 wasn’t
as knowledgeable.”
In search of hard data on
“revisionists” who deny the
existence of the Holocaust, he
found the Simon Weisenthal
Center. He has been a member of
the center’s speakers bureau since
1981, appearing, when he has
time, before groups of all ages.
He said his celebrity status —
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i-»—
based primarily on his role as
French prisoner of war Louis
LeBeau on the popularTV situa
tion comedy “Hogan’s Heroes”—
helps him in his lectures. “People
listen more,” he explained.
Clary’s message is to learn trom
the past and to stop hating. He
compares the second-rate citizen
ship of Jews in pre-war Europe
to the treatment of blacks in
America, and urges instead tol
erance and understanding.
This proclivity to accept oth
ers is shared by LeClair. LeClair
reappeared on the soap earlier
this year with an Orthodox brother
who survived the camp with him.
The brother's daughter, a sur
geon, falls in love with a non-
Jewish doctor on the staff of her
hospital.
LeClair favors his niece marry
ing the non-Jew. Although in
real life Clary debates the inter
marriage because he feels tradi
tion is important, he is moved by
what he called “my liberal mind”
to be concerned with the happi
ness of the spouses.
Just before Clary was to tem
porarily leave the show, the ex-
Nazi appeared and was arrested.
Clary was consulted by the pro
ducer and writers on certain
details, and he said he ensured
that the story was as authentic as
possible.
LeClair’s story parallels Clary’s
own story fairly closely, he noted.
Like his character, Clary comes
from a religious Parisian family,
but is not religious. Clary was
not in a camp with a brother,
however, he lost 12 close family
members.
Clary also never has come in
contact with a Nazi from his
past. If -he ever does. Clary said
that he would try to bring him to
justice just as LeClair did.
Moreover, Clary finds his
Holocaust lecturing to be a grati
fying and necessary purge of his
memories. “It never left me,” he
explained. “It has always been
there, way in the back. 1 had
nightmares. The memory will al
ways be very vivid.”
The youngest of 16 children,
Clary was deported with his fam
ily in 1942. At his first Nazi
camp, he was forced into slave
labor, while his family was sent
on to Auschwitz and gassed. He
was liberated from Buchenwald
in 1945.
Upon his return to Paris, he
was surprised to meet his sister.
With her help, he quickly was
reacclimated into French society.
That story is told in the docu
mentary “Robert Clary A5714:
A Memoir of Liberation.”
He soon found work as a per
former, and in 1947 was discov
ered in a Paris nightclub. A hit
song led him to move to the U.S.
in 1949. He has since worked in
nightclubs, movies and television,
including playing himself in the
1982 television movie, “Remem
brance of Love,” with Kirk Dou
glas, about the World Gathering
of Holocaust Survivors in Jeru
salem.
Clary often has been pressed
to explain how he could work in
“Hogan’s Heroes,” a situation
comedy that parodied the Nazis.
Clary responds that POWs were
not treated as badly as were con
centration camp prisoners and
that not all Germans were cruel
Nazis.
And as an actor, he feels obli
gated not to limit himself to
characters who are good people.
“I’d play a Nazi,” Clary said. “II
I could show a Nazi is a terrible
person, of course I’m going to
play it. That’s what actors are
for, so you can hate me for spit
ting on a Jew if you don’t like it.”
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