Jean Biondi was born in
Sari-d'Orcino, on the island of
Corsica. Educated in
Ajaccio, the island's capital, and in
Paris, he taught at the
Lycée Condorcet in the
9th arrondissement of Paris. Joining the
French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), the French socialist party, he was one of the editors of the ''Cri populaire de l'Oise'', newspaper of the SFIO in the
Oise département. He was elected mayor of
Creil in 1935 and entered the
Chamber of Deputies in 1936 following a by-election in the Oise département. He was re-elected at the general election which followed later in the year, bringing
Léon Blum's
Popular Front government to power. In 1937 he was appointed to the editorial committee of the SFIO's official journal
Le Populaire. In July 1940, he was one of the
80 who voted against the grant of special powers to
Philippe Pétain and the creation of the
Vichy régime. As a consequence Biondi was dismissed as mayor of Creil in 1941. The same year he joined the Comité d'action socialiste, the clandestine form of the then-banned SFIO. Arrested in 1942, he was soon released after which he joined the
French Resistance in the form of the
Brutus Network. Arrested a second time he was held at
Fresnes prison, tortured and deported to
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and later moved to the
Ebensee concentration camp. Following the end of the
Second World War Biondi returned to France. He was awarded the
Médaille de la Résistance, the
Croix de Guerre and was made a chevalier of the
Légion d'honneur. He was elected to the
National Assembly, which replaced the pre-war Chamber and the immediately post-war Consultative Assembly, serving as under-secretary to the
Minister of the Interior in
Léon Blum's third ministry (1946–47) and later as secretary of state under several prime ministers (1947–50), usually with responsibility for the
French Civil Service . In 1950 Biondi died in a car crash near
Groslay. ==References==