SILENT HERO
“Marcel reluctantly agreed to help them, and I found it really beautiful how he completely changes. He goes from being an egotistical human being to a person who is truly devoted to saving the lives of these children.”
Unable to communicate with words, Marcel began using mime to help put the children at ease, first with a simple gesture that would later make him famous – a hand passed over his face from happy to sad and back again. He then found ways to make them laugh, include a walkagainst-the-wind routine that would later become his signature.
When Hitler invaded France in 1940, Marcel and the Jewish Boy Scouts fled with the children to Lyon, hiding with families in the city.
Marcel and his brother forged documents to change the ages of French youths to make them too young to be sent to labour camps or, in the case of the non-jewish children, to work in German factories. He also changed his own surname from the Jewish Mangel to the French Marceau.
As Jews in the city started to be rounded up, the Jewish Resistance decided to get the orphaned children to safety in Switzerland. Marcel led the children across the Alps on three trips. He used his mime and clowning to calm them when their papers were checked by the Nazi soldiers. Jonathan says: “Growing up in Strasbourg he knew German, so he taught the children German songs. It helped that he could talk to the soldiers in their own language.
“He was incredibly courageous. Switzerland had this law that said they weren’t accepting refugees, but if you were a child refugee and you made it to Switzerland they wouldn’t report you because it was a neutral country. Once they were there, Save the Children would claim them. It
Film scene & Marcel at 2001 awards was a safe haven so the whole effort was to get them there without the Nazis stopping them.”
Jonathan says: “Marcel was involved in three operations at the beginning but the rest of the operation of the Jewish Boy Scouts together with Save the Children saved 10,000 children.”
Marcel’s father Charles was caught by the Gestapo and killed in Auschwitz in 1944.
Jonathan says: “The most moving story I heard is that Marcel tracked down where his father was sent, but nobody knew what Auschwitz was. He would sit and wait for the train that came back from Poland to see if his father would come back from this place.”
After the war, Marcel became the most famous mime in the world, creating Bip, a melancholy clown with a white face, striped jumper and battered hat with limp flower. After success on the US stage and
television
Jesse Eisenberg as Marcel uses his mime skills to entertain the orphaned Jewish children in the mid-1950s, he performed Bip internationally for decades. His work inspired numerous stars, from actor Gary Cooper to magician David Copperfield. Michael Jackson famously asked him to create “the choreography of my lost childhood” and Marcel’s sketch Walking Against the Wind inspired Jackson’s moonwalk.
Marcel never spoke of his war-time experiences, except when he was presented with the Wallenberg Medal for his humanitarian work in 2001. He told the audience at the University of Michigan: “I don’t like to speak about myself because what I did, humbly, during the war was only a small part of what happened to heroes who died through their deeds.
“I will not speak about my deeds. It is true I saved children, bringing them to Switzerland. I forged identity cards with my brother when it was very dangerous if you were arrested especially if you were in the underground.”
Jonathan says: “It is important for moviegoers to see how much worse the world was not so long ago but also how much better it can get.” ■ Resistance is available on Video on Demand.