[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

trivia:

Werner Klemperer who played Colonel Klink was jewish and escaped Germany with his family in the 1930s.

Several of the actors in "The Great Escape" had been POWs in WW2:

- Donald Pleasance was in the RAF and held in a German POW camp.

- Hannes Messemer who played the Camp commander had been a POW of the Russians;

- Til Kiwe who played one of the German Guards had a been held in an American POW camp. He actually did excape a few times, once making it all the way from Colorado to St. Louis.

- Hans Reiser who played a Gestapo Agent had also been held by the U.S.A.

ya fergot one; John Banner who played Sergeant Schultz:"

John Banner, who achieved television immortality for his portrayal of the Luftwaffe prison-camp guard Sergeant Schultz in the TV series Hogan's Heroes (1965), was born on January 28, 1910 in Vienna, the capital of what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The 28-year-old Banner, who was Jewish, was forced to abandon his homeland after the 1938 Anschluss (union) between Nazi Germany and Austria, which occurred while he was engaged in a tour of Switzerland with an acting company. Unable to return to Austria due to Hitler's anti-Semitic policies of persecution, he immigrated to the United States as a political refugee.

Soon after reaching the States, Banner -- who was completely ignorant of the English language -- was hired to emcee a musical revue. He had to learn his lines phonetically, but the total immersion paid off in that he rapidly picked up English. His accent and "Nordic" look ironically meant that he was typecast in several films as Nazis during the 1940s. He survived the war playing the very villains who were murdering his family who had been left behind in Austria, all of whom perished in concentration camps.

He died in Vienna age 63 in 1973