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Remarkable Heroes and Heroines of the French Resistance in World War II

Khalid Elhassan May 12, 2025 18 min

Resistance - Women and men of the French Resistance — Women and men of the French Resistance. Pegasus Battlefield Tours

5. Becoming “Marceau”

Marceau’s talent for miming – a career to which he had aspired ever since he saw a Charlie Chaplain movie when he was five-years-old – came in handy. He used it to distract and quiet the children as he smuggled them past German guards and across the border to safety in Switzerland. After the Allies landed in France in 1944, Marceau gave his first major performance before an audience of 3000 troops in recently-liberated Paris. He then joined the Free French army for the remainder of the war.

Marceau’s talent for languages and near fluency in English and German led to his appointment as a liaison officer with General George S. Patton’s Third US Army. Marcel Marceau passed away in a retirement home in 2007. A biographical movie based on Marceau’s life and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Resistance, was released in 2020.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.