« In the courtyard, the most rigid attention is de rigueur. The fact of having your hands in your pockets, of leaning against the wall, earns you a slap or a punch from the sentries. In the classroom [which adjoins the town hall], the treatment inflicted is even harsher. Moans and cries of pain come from this torture chamber. The next day the floor and walls were stained with blood. At half past twelve, the individual interrogation of the group in the courtyard began. The questions, insidious as they could be, were always directed towards the maquis.
« Testimony of Jean Serventie, member of the FTP Resistance. He was arrested on 16 January 1944 in the house he occupied with his family in Saint-Front-de-Pradoux
« It was a Sunday, under a thick fog. An officer, two non-commissioned officers, Willy [Gersbach], the Gestapo interpreter from Périgueux, and three German soldiers held us at gunpoint about fifty metres from the house and came to arrest us. I asked to kiss my son who was sleeping in the room on the first floor, a non-commissioned officer accompanied me. I kissed my wife, at which point the officer made the sign of the cross on her forehead with his thumb. We left in the direction of the bridge at Mussidan, where a lorry was waiting for us.
Jean Serventie.