I’ve been looking for pictures of these characters, and ironically enough I find a lot of headshots but no full figures, which I am looking for. Can anyone help?
I always loved the fact that Schultz was my favorite character of the show. Clumsy, but lovable. Then I discovered that he was of Jewish ancestry and escaped his native Austria-Hungary (which is now part of Ukraine) before WW2 and even served in the US Army during WW2.
He, like fellow cast member Robert Clary (Corporal LeBeau), lost family members during the Holocaust; Robert Clary himself was in a Concentration Camp and was able to survive the war.
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Klink’s father or maybe grand father was a well known composer/conductor in Germany during the 30’s. When asked to play the part of Klink, Werner Klemperer took the part on the condition that Klink would be a bumbler
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yup. He said the moment Klink was seen as a hero; he would leave the show.
Tremendous help! Thanks!
Actually somebody who could be controlled like a child. It would have been better if he had a little bit more menace.
General Burkhalter’s parents were murdered during the Holocaust as well. He himself managed to flee Austria and served in the US Army Air Forces.
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The actors who played the four major German roles—Werner Klemperer (Klink),[17] John Banner (Schultz), Leon Askin (General Burkhalter), and Howard Caine (Major Hochstetter)—were all Jewish. In fact, Klemperer, Banner, and Askin had all fled the Nazis during World War II (Caine, whose birth name was Cohen, was an American). Robert Clary, a French Jew who played LeBeau, spent three years in a concentration camp (with an identity tattoo from the camp on his arm, “A-5714”); his parents and other family members were killed there. Likewise, Banner had been held in a (pre-war) concentration camp and his family was killed during the war. Askin was also in a pre-war French internment camp and his parents were killed at Treblinka. Other Jewish actors, including Harold Gould and Harold J. Stone, made multiple appearances playing German generals.
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Lots of interesting facts about the series. Actualy you can see it in Germany.To many germans it’s hard to joke about this time,but the most are just not interested.Unbelieveble,but there are many young germans never heared about Auschwitz ore any facts to the time. A friend of mine is a teacher, he said when he tells them in school they don’t believe it or are simply bored. Sad but true
My starter wife was German, form Berlin. She said they pounded it into their heads so much at school they were sick of hearing about it.
I was in school over 30 years ago, at that time there was not very intensive informations. I think, in germany was the main meaning about the time: " let’s forget it and start again", and that since 1945
In many ways I can understand the younger generation’s attitude to WW2 in Germany, they’re completely innocent and shouldn’t be burdened with their grandparents’/great-grandparents’ activities. The scale of what happened is hard for anyone to comprehend even today.
For the current older generations outside Germany the scars are still raw. Imagine this situation occurring today – my wife’s mother was in a cattle-truck evacuated from Auschwitz, parked in a siding at Hanover station in January 1945 as my father’s Lancaster squadron was dropping bombs directly onto it. And my brother’s father-in-law was the only survivor of his Halifax shot down while dropping bombs on the same target, same night. Hard to comprehend, and hard to forget that while they miraculously survived, so many didn’t. I include ordinary German civilians.
But I worry a lot if the fundamental message that nationalism, racism and fake propaganda can so easily brainwash ordinary people is not being taught – in Germany, and every other country in the world. In the 1930’s radio & cinema carried the poison, today it’s even easier to do it as Cambridge Analytica recently proved.
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Ordinary germans, that’s the problem. I always thought, my grandfather was one of them, he would never do anything of all that what I’ve heared and read about the time. Then, shortly before he died, he spokes the first time about his time “in the east”.I was really shocked, I never thought, that he could do only the smallest part of that, what he told me. On the other side, I would never say “how can you do that,I would never do” and that was, he feared. I think, noone knows what he would do in this situation.
By the way,I’m from Hanover
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Hi Marco,
So refreshing & enlightening to hear your honest opinions, thank you. Re. Hanover, I wonder if that raid on January 5th 1945 is commemorated at all?
And I agree, it’s hard for any of us to truly imagine what the Ost-front was like. Hell for everyone on both sides for sure. For those young Germans, they’d been persuaded the Russians were sub-humans/Untermensch so killing them was like nothing, like exterminating rodents. In response Russian partisans killed as many Germans as possible. So revenge & vengeance escalated, that’s what War was, and is.
Normal human beings reduced to worse than animals, often simply to survive. I’m not excusing any of that, but it’s what happens.
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You’re right,it was like that and will always be.
There was an air raid on the target of hanover on january 5th 1945
There was also a concentration camp in hanover-stöcken,but noone in hanover knew that…(sarcasm)
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In germany people demonstrated against the government’s covid measures, they pinned “jewish stars” to their chests and said they were just as much a victim as the jews were. They call themselves “lateral thinkers”
This really happend
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I didn’t know that…but it (a) supports what you said earlier about poor history teaching (b) proves that in every country approx. 25% of the population (or more) is crazy/deluded. (And being left-handed I’ve often been accused of being a lateral thinker…I’m ashamed of them)
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It was a Polish tour guide who told our group that “the Lidice treatment” is used nowadays to complain about business hosts who treat you rudely and was aware the term is in bad taste. (Lidice being a Czechoslovakian town that was thoroughly destroyed and its people wiped out after Reynard Heydrich was assassinated there.)
And it’s normal for people not to care about events that happened centuries ago. There is a French expression that translates to “I don’t care about that any more than I do about the year 40!”
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And it can work both ways. You can make any criticism of Israel, however legitimate, and be called a Nazi for it. And when mayor Lori Lightfoot was voted out of the mayoral office in Chicago, she claimed to be victimized because she was a black woman. (Never mind that it was why she was voted in to begin with, and she was voted out for being a bad mayor.)
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