Marcel Marceau was a French actor and mime artist 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. Marceau died in a retirement home in Cahors, France, on 22 September 2007 at the age of 84 and Google celebrated his 100th birthday with a Google Doodle on March 22, 2023.
Marcel Marceau was born in Strasbourg, France, to a Jewish family. His father, Charles Mangel, was a kosher butcher originally from Będzin, Poland whereas his mother, Anne Werzberg, came from Yabluniv, present-day Ukraine. Marcel Marceau had not been the only child of his parents he has an elder brother named Alain.
Marcel Marceau siblings: Meet Alain Marceau
When Marcel was four years old, the family moved to Lille, but they later returned to Strasbourg and after France’s invasion by Nazi Germany, Marcel, who was then 17, fled with his family to Limoges.
The two brothers together adopted the last name “Marceau” during the German occupation of France. According to the two brothers, the name was chosen as a reference to François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers, a general of the French Revolution.
In 1944, both boys lost their father, who was captured by the Gestapo and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was killed but their mother survived.
Marcel and his brother Alain teamed up together and joined the French Resistance in Limoges which enabled them to rescue numerous children from the race laws and concentration camps in the framework of the Jewish Resistance in France.
