Ing. Karel Witz

* 1947

  • "He was a stoker in the crematorium, he owed me this story, of course, the thing that his younger colleague – Dr Deutsch, who emigrated to England during the war – told me later, that he knew from his brothers, who also ended up in Theresienstadt for being Jewish, that corpses would dance when being burned. Can you imagine that? I don't think so. So, please, imagine that the body, the dead person lying there, starts to dry up, and the body just straightens up, stands up and twirls, that's what it takes to burn corpses. And that's the profession that my daddy did right up till the end. Because he was just this ideal choice for the Germans, as a doctor of law, because they said, 'He's Jewish and a doctor of law, he's definitely good at burning corpses.'”

  • "Look, it was terribly simple, I went round the houses, and I said, good sir, hello, I am this and that, and I have been organising this thing, we could take over the brewery, and if we would own it, you too will become one of the owners, and if we wouldn't, then, unfortunately, there would be nothing, as it's just an experiment. And that's how I went around the whole of Polička." - "He must have given you some kind of consent to represent them then?" - "It had to be certified by a notary." - "Of the 230 people who held the right, how many did you manage to reach?" - "All of them!" - "All of them? Well, that wasn't easy." - "Damn sure that wasn't easy." - "How long have you been doing this?" - "Twelve years." - "Well, wait a minute, but you got the brewery sooner, it didn't take 12 years." - "I know, but it took me 12 years to put all this together." - "But the court ruled sooner than in 12 years." - "Of course, the court ruled when it had 77 shares out of 113." - "This kind of restitution, has anyone else in Bohemia managed to do this?" - "No, no one, no one, and no one would succeed. Because first of all we are living in Bohemia and secondly I am the only one who could do this.”

  • "We didn't go to Polička, but we spent some time in the surrounding area, in Lačnov, in Sádek and in Telecí." - "Because your mother's family lived there?" - "No, our friends lived there. And we used to spend summer there, because as a university teacher my dad had a two-month lond vacation, so we would spend two months in the countryside every summer, always somewhere in the vicinity of Polička. And as we would go through Polička, one day, I might have been, I don't know, 12 years old, and he said, he pointed like this, this is where we are, this was how Dad pointed his finger, this is where we are, and he showed us those windows, this is where we lived. Not that he wanted to go there, as he couldn't anyway, but he said, this is where we lived."

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    Polička, 22.09.2020

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I‘m proud of our brewery. The brewing right had its rationale

Karel Witz playing the guitar as a Modus group member, around 1978
Karel Witz playing the guitar as a Modus group member, around 1978
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Karel Witz was born on January 7th, 1947 in Prague. His father, who had been a lawyer and a teacher at Charles University, was of Jewish ancestry. He was imprisoned in Terezín during the Nazi occupation. Most of his paternal side of the family were murdered in the concentration camps. He graduated from the University of Economics in Prague. He married a Slovak woman and in 1973 he started working at the statistical office in Košice. In addition to his job, he was a musician. As a guitarist, he worked with Miroslav Žbirka and Marika Gombitova in the Modus band, and later played with the Collegium Musicum band. After 1989, he got back the brewery in Polička thanks to property restitutions. He started Měšt‘anský pivovar, a successful brewery. In 2020, the company had been managed by his children.