They pounded us the whole night, and in the morning they loaded us on to a cart and took us away

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Hugo Drásal was born in 1927 in the village of Dalov, (German: Dohle; now a part of Šternberk), to parents of German nationality. During World War II he escaped military service in the Wehrmacht because of an eye defect. In September 1945, in the saloon of the local pub, he and other Germans from the village were held and savagely beaten by young Czechs claiming to be partisans. Drásal spent the following months in labour camps throughout Moravia. In the meantime, his father Hubert died in the Šternberk concentration camp, and his mother was evicted from their family home. Drasal returned to Dalov in December 1946, after the official expulsion of the Germans. Although he repeatedly requested permission to leave Czechoslovakia, he was denied. After returning from the labour camps, he worked as a farm hand until 1950. For the next fifty years he was employed as a stoker in the Uničov sugar refinery. In 1957 he married Marie Kristenová, from a German family from Rejhotice, in the Šumperk area. He now lives in Šternberk.