(Polish: , German: Zywotitz, Žywotitz, formerly Ziwotitz) 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 in 1960. It has a population of 1,064 (2007).[1] It lies in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia.
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It is well-known for most notorious Nazi World War II war crime in Zaolzie 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 and Ležáky. 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 under the command of J. Kamiński shot dead two officers of the Teschen command of Gestapo 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", 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, 4 from Dolní Bludovice, one from Dolní Suchá and one from Dolní Těrlicko. 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, 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.