- Person
- Marcel Marceau
- Lived
- 1923–2007
- Field
- Mime, theater
- From
- French
The story
Marcel Mangel was born in Strasbourg in 1923, the son of a Jewish kosher butcher. When war came, the Jews of Strasbourg were given two hours to pack and were sent to the southwest of France. Marcel and his older brother Alain ended up in Limoges, where they joined the underground and took a new name, Marceau, to hide their Jewish identity.
Their cousin Georges Loinger was a commander in the secret network of the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, a Jewish children's relief organization that smuggled Jewish children out of occupied France to neutral countries. Loinger recruited Marcel. His first job was forgery: he altered the ages on identity cards so that young people, Jewish and non-Jewish, appeared too young to be sent to labor camps or deported to work in German factories.
Loinger then asked him to help move Jewish children from an orphanage in Sèvres, near Paris, to Annemasse on the Swiss border. In 2002 Marceau recalled dressing as a Boy Scout leader and taking 24 Jewish children, also in scout uniforms, through the forests to the border. The network had other tricks: identity cards hidden in mayonnaise sandwiches that guards would not search, and Loinger throwing a ball over the frontier and telling children to run after it.
On these journeys silence could mean survival. Philippe Mora, the son of one of Marceau's comrades, said Marceau mimed to keep the children quiet as they escaped, and Marceau himself said he used pantomime to keep children silent at the most dangerous moments. History.com credits him with helping save at least 70 children; Loinger is credited with about 350.
In 1944 Marceau's father was deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Marceau later said that destiny had permitted him to live, and that this was why he had to bring hope to people who struggle. In 2001 the University of Michigan awarded him the Wallenberg Medal for his courage in aiding Jewish people and other refugees during the war.
Why it matters
The children Marceau helped smuggle to safety survived to build lives and families, and his story remains a powerful lesson in courage taught in schools and retold in the 2020 film Resistance.
About Marcel Marceau
French mime who helped smuggle Jewish children to safety in the Resistance, then carried the wordless art of mime to audiences on every continent for 60 years.
More about Marcel Marceau
Sources
- The French Resistance's Secret Weapon? The Mime Marcel Marceau History.com
- Marcel Marceau Jewish Virtual Library
- French hero who saved hundreds of Jewish children dies aged 108 The Times of Israel
- Marcel Marceau Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.