Životice (Havírov)
Encyclopedia
is a village in Karviná District
Karviná District
Karviná District is a district within the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. Its administrative center is the city of Karviná. It was created by 1960 reform of administrative divisions in the area of former Fryštát District...

, Moravian-Silesian Region
Moravian-Silesian Region
Moravian-Silesian Region , or Moravo-Silesian Region, is one of 14 administrative Regions of the Czech Republic, until May 2001 it was formerly called the Ostrava Region . The region is located in the north-eastern part of its historical region of Moravia and in most of the Czech part of the...

, Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

. It was a separate municipality but after the expansion of the city of Havířov
Havírov
Havířov is a city in the Karviná District, Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It has 82,768 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the region. It is the largest town in the country without a university...

 created in 1955 it became administratively a part of this city in 1960. It has a population of 1,064 (2007). It lies in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia
Cieszyn Silesia
Cieszyn Silesia or Těšín Silesia or Teschen Silesia is a historical region in south-eastern Silesia, centered around the towns of Cieszyn and Český Těšín and bisected by the Olza River. Since 1920 it has been divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia, and later the Czech Republic...

.

Tragedy

It is well-known for most notorious Nazi World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 war crime in Zaolzie
Zaolzie
Zaolzie is the Polish name for an area now in the Czech Republic which was disputed between interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia. The name means "lands beyond the Olza River"; it is also called Śląsk zaolziański, meaning "trans-Olza Silesia". Equivalent terms in other languages include Zaolší in...

 area - the Żywocice tragedy. The small village was a scene of a cruel event in 1944. On 6 August 1944, 36 residents of Zivotice and neighbouring villages were shot dead. This number makes it the largest liquidation operation within Těšin Silesia during World War II. The Životice operation thus made suite to such retaliation measures as the annihilation of Lidice
Lidice
Lidice is a village in the Czech Republic just northwest of Prague. It is built on the site of a previous village of the same name which, as part of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was on orders from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, completely destroyed by German forces in reprisal...

 and Ležáky
Ležáky
Ležáky was a village in Czechoslovakia. In 1942 it was razed to the ground by Nazis during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.Ležáky was a settlement inhabited by poor stone-cutters and little cottagers...

. Životice was nicknamed "the Silesian Lidice" when the war was over.

The pretext of this retaliation was the exchange of fire in I. Mokrosz's inn in the village during the night from 4 to 5 August where the members of locally operating Polish resistance unit of Armia Krajowa
Armia Krajowa
The Armia Krajowa , or Home Army, was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...

 under the command of J. Kamiński shot dead two officers of the Teschen command of Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

 and their driver (who died later during the transfer to Teschen). The innkeeper and a resistance fighter also died. The search for the guerilla members was fruitless, and thus, Gestapo decided to give a lesson in aiming the retaliation at the village residents.

In early hours of Sunday 6 August, Životice was surrounded by the German Army and the Landwache. A specific group was targeted: those who refused to register as ethnic Germans and to enter the "Volksliste
Volksliste
The Deutsche Volksliste was a Nazi institution whose purpose was the classification of inhabitants of German occupied territories into categories of desirability according to criteria systematized by Heinrich Himmler. The institution was first established in occupied western Poland...

", the German ethnic register. These lists had been prepared in advance. The Landwache and Gestapo office from Teschen and Katowitz combed the village, dragging residents out of their houses under a false pretext and shooting them in the nape close to their homes.
Some took the last chance, trying to escape, and were shot on escape.

Apart from local residents a certain number of people were murdered while passing through the village, these being mostly coal miners on their way back from their night shift, who failed to produce the Volksliste document. The bloody operatio counted 36 victims. Of these 27 were ethnic Poles, 8 Czechs, one was registered as "Volksdeutscher" class three. 24 victims were residents of Životice, 6 were residents of Horní Suchá
Horní Suchá
is a village in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It has 4,503 inhabitants , Poles form 23.2% of the population....

, 4 from Dolní Bludovice
Dolní Bludovice
is a village in Karviná District, Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Republic. It was a separate municipality but after the expansion of the city of Havířov created in 1955 it became administratively a part of this city as Bludovice in 1960. Lučina River flows through the village. Large part of the...

, one from Dolní Suchá
Dolní Suchá
is a village in Karviná District, Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Republic. It was a separate municipality but became administratively a part of Havířov in 1960. It has a population of 615 . Village lies in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia....

 and one from Dolní Těrlicko
Terlicko
is a village in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It has 4,202 inhabitants and Poles constitute 12.9% of the population...

. The youngest victim was sixteen, the oldest sixty. When the massacre was over, the corpses were loaded to trucks and carried to the old Jewish cemetery in Orlová
Orlová
Orlová is a town in the Karviná District, Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Republic. It lies in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia.- History :...

, where they were dumped in a commomn grave. The German authorities then entered cardiac insufficiency and cardiac infarcts as the death cause in the death register. The principal offenders were never punished.

The liquidation operation was headed by Q. Magwitz, the commander of Teschen headquarters of Gestapo, and affected innocent victims, never involved in the guerilla operation. Their only guilt was in their opposition to the German assimilation programme, preserving their Polish or Czech identity. The corpses were transferred from Orlová to Životice when the war was over. On 25 September 1949, a memorial by Franciszek Świder, a Karviná-based sculptor, was unveiled to commemorate the Životice victims. In 1984, a new building was opened next to the memorial to accommodate the exhibition Occupation and Resistance Movement in Cieszyn Silesia 1938-1944. The memorial is dedicated to all victims of German accupation, commemorating the suffering of local residents. This massacre is known as Tragedia Żywocicka in Polish or Životická tragédie in Czech.
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