Unsung Hero

Published Jan 11, 2022, 10:00 AM

Origin stories are often curious, and these two tales are guaranteed to entertain.

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Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Not everyone gets recognition for their work, even when they deserve it. The teacher who helps a child read, or the nurse who notices something wrong with a patient might never get acknowledged for their contributions. But a hero doesn't help people for fame or fortune. They do it because it's the right thing to do. One man, however, did go on to great acclaim, but not for helping people, even though that was precisely why he should have been famous in the first place. Marcel Mangel was born in Strasbourg, France, in nineteen three. His father, a kosher butcher, had emigrated from Poland, while his mother had come from Ukraine. Macguel spent a lot of time with his parents and especially enjoyed going to the movies with his mother. He was a big fan of silent film star Charlie Chaplin, who inspired him to pursue acting later in life. While Mangel was a kid, he would act like Chaplin, pretending to be famous figures like Robin Hood and Napoleon while playing with the other children in the neighborhood. He loved acting, but unfortunately his chance at a future in Hollywood was cut short when the Nazis invaded France. Mangel was only seventeen when he and his family were forced to leave their home. They settled in Limoges, a small town about two hundred and fifty miles south of Paris. It was around this time when the young Mangel connected with his cousin George longuere longuere escaped from a German pow camp and joined the French Jewish Resistance. Now he was encouraging his cousin to do the same. Their fellow Jews in France were in need of help, and Mangel could do a lot of good during the war. He also kept up his acting lessons while attending a technical school in Limoges. Upon joining the Resistance, Mangel got his start by forging I D Cards for his fellow members, but was quickly assigned to a new position helping Jewish children get to safety so that they could be evacuated out of France. Mangel was young, which made him someone the children could look up to. They loved spending time with him, and because he made them feel safe, they were able to remain calm while on the run from German soldiers. One time, man Gel put on a boy Scout uniform and pretended to be a Scout leader for twenty four Jewish children, all wearing uniforms of their own. He escorted them to the French border, where he handed them off to an ally who helped them cross over into Switzerland. But it wasn't just his young age that endeared him to the kids. He acted for them as well, performing little shows to distract them as Nazis patrolled nearby. He was also able to convey messages to them using hand gestures and facial expressions, which came in pretty handy when they couldn't speak without giving away their position. Mangel's efforts and his acting managed to save the lives of over seventy Jewish children from the Nazis. They also saved his own life when he found himself surrounded by thirty German soldiers. He pretended to be part of the French Army, convincing them that they were at risk of being killed by an approaching units unless they surrendered, which they did, every last one of them. Sadly, while he was helping the resistance and saving lives, his father was captured by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz in Nto. He did not survive. Manuel and his brother Elaine had also changed their last name to avoid being found out as Jews by the Germans. They adopted the Surm, name of a general from the French Revolution, a name that Mangel wound up keeping for the rest of his life. Once the war ended, he was finally able to sue his true passion. He joined a French theater company and one a part in a show called Baptiste, which earned him rave reviews. This success led to more roles where he demonstrated his unique talents for a particular kind of performance, pantomime. His biggest and most popular role came in ninety seven when he created a brand new character named Bip the clown. BIPs costume was comprised of white face paint, a striped shirt, and a tall silk hat with a flower sticking out of the top. For Mangel, it became his signature look. He grew into a certified hit, putting on sold out shows without ever saying a word. He called it the art of silence, an art that turned him into a household name. However, no matter how successful he became as a mime, Marcel Marceau would be known to dozens of Jewish children and adults as Marcel Mangel, the young man who saved them from the Nazis, an unspoken and unspeaking hero of War War two and proof that even though it isn't the most respected art form out there, a mime is a terrible thing to waste. Prison often has a way of recentering one's focus. After all, when spending your time in relative isolation, detached from the outside world, the free time one has with their mind is oftentimes overwhelming. By that token, it's no surprise that numerous great minds, when cast into this isolation, turned out written works that have impacted the world for centuries. Marco Polo recounted his travels while imprisoned by the Genoan's Oscar wild Penn d profound Us after finally securing writing materials from the prison warden, and of course, Nelson Mandela's conversations with myself was composed during his twenty seven years in captivity, and in terms of kept civity, there are not many places that one would least want to find themselves then imprisoned on the ship of pirates, because the thing with pirates is that they don't exactly have a governing principle, which makes their policy of imprisonment a little loose, oftentimes cruel, maybe even a little brutal. And that was where Miguel found himself, along with his little brother Rodrigo, in the year fifteventive, stowed away in the hold of an Ottoman corsair ship, imprisoned after a hard fought battle. You could say that Miguel was not having the best of times. Recently, he had been suffering from malaria as well as a debilitating wound in his left arm and chest, the former of which he would never fully recover from, not to mention that he could not engage in his true passion writing. These captive brothers were ticketed for a life of servitude as slaves in Algiers, the center of the Christian slave markets in the Muslim world, that is, if no ransom could be paid. And given the fact that the brothers were relatively high born, a fact that the Corsairs relished. The ransom would not come cheaply, and amazingly, the family did pay the ransom requested, but only for Rodrigo. You see, they didn't have the money to afford their oldest son as well. So Miguel continued his time in captivity, moving on to Istanbul, where he was forced into manual labor. However, mcguel did not lose himself to the despair of servitude. Instead, he made quite a name for himself among the captive community for his strength and courage among fellow slaves, with numerous historical accounts from his peers mentioning Micguel. Specifically, he attempted four escapes, each one commended for its boldness and courage, but in the end all would fail, leaving him right back where he started. It would take five more years to spring Miguel from this fate, thanks in part to a truce signed between the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire. With his freedom in hand, Miguel was left to pursue his own ends back in Spain, but he found the economic climate of his home country almost as taxing as captivity. In North Africa and Istanbul. He continuously struggled with unemployment while his family, formerly of the middle class, had fallen with the rest of the Spanish like them. Despite applying for numerous positions in America, mcguel continued to find his future blocked by a sputtering Spanish economy and a lack of opportunity. All the while, mcguel continued to write while sustenance was nowhere to be found. He sold his first book, La Galatea in fifty five, earning him a modest one thousand, three thirty six Spanish reals, but, as is so often the case, one moderate success does not spell a lifetime of creative independence. Despite penning another twenty to thirty plays, Miguel continued to move from post to post, winning the occasional poetry competition or two, but never really finding the promised land that he sought. In fact, he found himself in worse financial footing than ever before, which landed him back in prison, this time in the jail of Sevilla, however, and not chained to the brig of a barbary ship. Whatever form that captivity took, and he had plenty to choose from. Believe me, it led, at his own admission, to the creation of one of the greatest works in the history of literature, the story of a foolish night and his happy sidekick. We just want a little more good in the world. And if you haven't pieced it altogether, just yet, this Miguel was indeed Miguel de Cervantes and the book Don Quixote. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Two

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