Miloš Schütz

* 1942

  • "A ban came that cars with a compressor were not allowed to race. So [my father] bought a BMW engine to put it in a Bugatti car. But before he could do that, foreign cars were banned from the races, in the 1950s. And finally - and this is confirmed in the book about the Masaryk circuit, where Antonín Vitvar, who was driving a Norton, was winning and was always beating Jawa mortorcycles, so they banned him from riding a Norton. He writes there that when he was going with his daughter into the depot, they asked him why he had not started, he confirms the ban on foreign machines. And before the idea of putting a BMW engine in a Bugatti car was carried out, an order was issued that they would be obliged to sign that they would not overtake Tatra and Škoda cars at races. So he said that he could f*** it. He said it quite rudely. At that time, they allowed people to build popular small cars, so he started building a racing Minor. When the ban came, he converted it into a popular small car. And it´s lucky that it turned out like this. The racing Minor would have been long gone by now, but the popular small car is still here. It still has registration number, I maintain it, and I can repair anything on it."

  • "In Drukov, they pushed me to join the party. I was working with a man who, at first, would lay down in front of the tanks during the Russian occupation with our flag. Then, when things turned the other way round, they were after him because of the photos, so he hurriedly joined the party. He was luring me in and once he said, 'You'll have to go to meetings, it´s a must,' and I said, 'Listen to what the Party says. The first thing is family. So I'll go to my family first and when I have time, I'll go to the meeting.'"

  • "Towards the end of the war, when they were called up to the army again, my father was employed in the arms factory in Přelouč. And they were the first to arrange for the delivery of medicines to Terezín. He went there with one soldier, I don't remember his name, and when they arrived there they didn't want to let them in. So, with a handgun in his hand, he urged a Russian officer who wrote him a pass in his own hand, which I still have here. I also provided a copy to Terezín. And by the time they got back to the car, the half of the medicines had been stolen. But then they brought two citizens from Terezín to Přelouč."

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    Bílovice nad Svitavou, 01.06.2023

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    duration: 01:14:22
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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They wouldn’t let Dad enter Terezín with medicine. So he rushed in with a handgun

Miloš Schütz in 2023
Miloš Schütz in 2023
photo: Post Bellum

Miloš Schütz was born on 1 May 1942 in Přelouč, Pardubice region. His mother Emílie was a photographer, his father Miloš was an officer in the Czechoslovak Army. After the army was dissolved in 1939, he set up a saw manufacturing business. He employed forty workers in his workshop, who thanks to him did not have to go to forced labour in the Third Reich. During the war years, his father secretly hid weapons, which he used to actively participate in the revolutionary events in May 1945. On 11 May 1945, on behalf of the Red Cross, he brought medicines to sick prisoners in Terezín. Miloš Schütz trained as a machine fitter, worked at Adamov Machine Works in the 1960s, and from the 1970s at the Drukov metalworking cooperative. His lifelong passion is motoring. He still has a fully mobile authorized popular car in his garage, marked MIS 350. It was built in the 1950s by his father, also a car and motorcycle enthusiast, who took part in a number of races during the First Republic. In 2023 Miloš Schütz was living in Bílovice nad Svitavou.