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These Stars Traded Hollywood Glamor for Wartime Glory

Khalid Elhassan March 31, 2022 37 min

16. Marceau’s Talent as a Mime Saved Lives

Star Facts - Marcel Marceau — Marcel Marceau. Wikimedia

The world’s most famous mime was born Marcel Mangel into a Jewish family in Strasbourg, France. His father was a kosher butcher originally from Poland, and his mother hailed from what is now Ukraine. The family had to hide its Jewish origins when the Nazis invaded and conquered France in 1940. They fled to central France, but the father was captured in 1944 and sent to Auschwitz, where he perished. Marcel moved to Paris with a new name and forged identity papers.

The future star went underground in the French capital, adopted the surname “Marceau” after a French Revolutionary War general, and joined the resistance. His underground activities included the rescue of many Jewish children from German clutches. His talent for miming – a career to which he had aspired ever since he first 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.

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.