Engleski B - 2024. ljeto, reading 3.

The Silent Hero

Marcel Marceau, born into a Jewish family in 1923 in Strasbourg, was one of the most famous mime performers in the world. Best known for his iconic stage persona ‘Bip the Clown’, whose name is based on Pip, a character from Dickens’ novel ‘Great Expectations’, he revolutionised the art of mime and brought it to international prominence. That’s why most people associate it with a cartoonish-looking tall man in black and white clothes with white makeup on his face.

Some of his most important work, though, occurred before his stage success. Due to the circumstances of the Second World War, he changed his name from Mangel to Marceau and became active in the French Resistance. Marceau was recruited by his cousin, Georges Loinger, the commander of a secret Jewish relief group that smuggled Jewish children from occupied France to neutral countries.

The group’s mission was to evacuate Jewish children hidden in a French orphanage and get them to the Swiss border, where they would find safety. Travelling with large groups of children was difficult, so Marceau used his secret weapon: mime. “The kids had to appear like they were simply going on vacation, and he really put them at ease, miming to keep them quiet as they were escaping,” Loinger told the Jewish Telegraph Agency in 2007.

Once he disguised himself as a boy scout leader and took 24 Jewish kids in scout uniforms through the forests to the border. When he unexpectedly ran into a group of German soldiers, he pretended that he was a member of the French Army and convinced all 30 of them to surrender. After the war, the silent hero soon skyrocketed to worldwide fame, thanks to the universality of his expression. As he said – mime, like music, knows neither borders nor nationalities.