Raymond Gurême was born in 1925 near Paris into a French Manouche (i.e. Sinti in French) family. As did several generations of the family before them, his parents owned a small circus and a travelling cinema: the family toured France and parts of Belgium and Switzerland where they were warmly received in villages deprived of Read More…
Gisela Nyman, born Blumenthal, was the daughter of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. She grew up in her birth town Leipzig. As a child, the Hungarian actor Marika Rökk became the role model for the young Gisela. At the age of five, Gisela began her ballet training. Later, she took also music lessons. Read More…
“He had a spectacular scar that split his palm from index finger to his wrist,” recalls Bertrand Laurence of his strongman-acrobat grandfather, Houssein ben Ibrik. “It was from his early years in Morocco. To stop the attacking blade, he’d grabbed the sword of a pirate mounted on a camel. With his other hand, he swung Read More…
