Did you know that world-famous mime artist Marcel Marceau saved the lives of Jewish children during WWII?
Marcel (né Mangel) was born 98 years ago, March 22, 1923, to a Jewish family in Strasbourg, France. His father, Charles Mangel, was a kosher butcher originally from Będzin, Poland. His mother, Anne Werzberg, came from Yabluniv, present-day Ukraine. Through his mother’s family, he was a cousin of Israeli singer Yardena Arazi. When Marcel was four years old, the family moved to Lille, but they later returned to Strasbourg. He was schooled in the Paris suburbs at the home of Yvonne Hagnauer, while pretending to be a worker at the school she directed; Hagnauer would later receive the honour of Righteous Among the Nations from Yad Vashem. In 1944 Marcel’s father was captured by the Gestapo and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was killed. Marcel’s mother survived. He and his brother Alain joined the French Resistance and changed their last name to Marceau to hide their Jewish identity.
According to Marceau, when he was five years of age, his mother took him to see a Charlie Chaplin film, which entranced him and led him to want to become a mime. The first time he used mime was after France was invaded, in order to keep Jewish children quiet while he helped them escape to neutral Switzerland.
Marcel helped smuggle Jewish children out of an orphanage and into neutral Switzerland. In order to do this, he made use of his acting and miming skills. For example, he once posed as a Boy Scout leader and led a group of children through the forests to the border. Marcel mimed to keep them quiet on the perilous journey and the children felt at ease.
He was most famous for his stage persona, “Bip the Clown”. He referred to mime as the “art of silence” and he performed professionally worldwide for over 60 years. As a Jewish youth, he lived in hiding and worked with the French Resistance during most of World War II. His first big performance took place in 1944 in front of 3,000 American soldiers following the liberation of Paris. He was serving as a liaison officer for General Patton’s Third Army. He went on to become a legendary mime and performed all over the world for more than 60 years. Following the war, he studied dramatic art and mime in Paris.
In 1959, he established his own pantomime school in Paris, and subsequently set up the Marceau Foundation to promote the art in the U.S. Among his various awards and honours he was made “Grand Officier de la Légion d’Honneur” (1998) and was awarded the National Order of Merit (1998) in France. He won the Emmy Award for his work on television, was elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and was declared a “National treasure” in Japan. He was friends with Michael Jackson for nearly 20 years and Jackson said he used some of Marceau’s techniques in his own dance steps.
Marcel passed away in southwestern France in 2007 at the age of 84. May his memory be a blessing.