u/Fake_Eleanor

Paul Henreid's character Victor Laszlo in Casablanca is portrayed as a Czechoslovakian resistance leader, but someone with connections to the leaders of resistance movements throughout Europe: Paris, Prague, Oslo, Athens, even Berlin.

The Nazis in Casablanca consider him not just any resistance leader, but someone irreplaceable; the resistance could withstand the loss of other leaders, but not Laszlo. He's well-known enough to have "impressed half the world," suggesting he's not just successful but famous.

And of course he was imprisoned in a "concentration camp" for a year, and succeeded in escaping.

Obviously, he's a fictional character, but is the role itself based on any figure or combination of figures that actually existed in Europe in the late '30s-early '40s? Or is he as pure a concoction as the letters of transit that guarantee anyone can leave Casablanca without being detained by the police (or the Nazis)?