René Parodi
René Parodi was a French magistrate, member of the French resistance and publisher of an underground newspaper during World War II. He was reportedly hanged after torture and imprisonment by the Gestapo.
Biography
He was born in Rouen, the son of Marie Emilie Hélène Vavin and Dominique Parodi, a philosopher and a member of the Institut de France. His grandfather was the dramatist and poet Dominique-Alexandre Parodi and his brother was the senior civil servant Alexandre Parodi. He became a magistrate and was appointed to Châlons-sur-Marne, then to Reims and finally Versailles. He married Jeanne Tissot in January 1932. On the outbreak of World War II he volunteered as a soldier. When the armistice was agreed, he resumed his role as a magistrate.At the end of 1940, he organised a group of resistance fighters to write propaganda and published the underground newspaper ''Résistance''
Awards and legacy
He was posthumously made a Compagnon de la Libération on 20 November 1944 and a knight of the Légion d'Honneur. A square-and-park are named after him and his brother Alexandre in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.Parodi, both as a resister and a magistrate, became the symbol and legitimising martyr of the judicial resistance in occupied France, at a time when the judiciary was later questioned for its collaboration and support for the Vichy regime. Following a tradition begun in the 1980s, the 2014 class promotion of new justice auditors from the École nationale de la magistrature chose to pay homage to him by "baptising" themselves with his name thus: René Parodi est le symbole de la résistance judiciaire française..
He was the father of the magistrate Claude Parodi.