Another bit of irony, besides John Banner being Jewish and playing a guard in a POW camp... is that like his co-star on Hogan's Heroes, Robert Clary.... John Banner was in a concentration camp prior to his release and travel out of Nazi Occupied Germany (in the early part of the Nazi control of Germany, a trip to a concentration camp was not an automatic "death sentence"). So John Banner was lucky to leave just before the Nazi policies changed.
Banner is best remembered for his portrayal of the Luftwaffe prison- camp guard Sergeant Schultz in the TV series "Hogan's Heroes" (1965). But there remains a certain irony: John Banner was Jewish.
Passed away in his native Vienna on his 63rd birthday.