Marcel Marceau

Marcel Marceau (; born Marcel Mangel; 22 March 1923 – 22 September 2007) was a French mime artist and actor most famous for his stage persona, "Bip the Clown". He referred to mime as the "art of silence", performing professionally worldwide for more than 60 years. As a Jewish youth, he lived in hiding and worked with the French Resistance during most of World War II, giving his first major performance to 3,000 troops after the liberation of Paris in August. Following the war, he studied dramatic art and mime in Paris. Early life Marcel Marceau was born in Strasbourg, France, to a Jewish family. 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. After France's invasion by Nazi Germany, Marcel, then 17, fled with his family to Limoges. His cousin Georges Loinger, one of the members of the French Jewish Resistance in France (Organisation Juive de Combat-OJC, aka Armée Juive), urged him to join in order to help rescue Jews during the Holocaust. The OJC, which was composed of nine clandestine Jewish networks, rescued thousands of Jewish children and adults during the war in France.