As a child, he witnessed first-hand the tragedy of Životice. As an adult, he was a victim of a mining accident
Stáhnout obrázek
Zdeněk Duda was born on 28 March 1940 in Životice into the family of a farmer Josef Duda and his wife Emilie, née Prymusová. His father was one of the few people in the village who claimed Czech nationality, which eventually proved fatal for him. Immediately after the beginning of the war on 1 September 1939, Těšín was seized by the Nazis and the inhabitants of Životice found themselves in the German Reich. In 1942, the Germans started the Germanization action called the Deutsche Volksliste. People were often forced to accept the Volksliste, and mostly Poles were threatened with deportation or forced labour if they refused. Zdeněk Duda‘s father did not accept the Volksliste. Then, in 1944, when members of the resistance organisation Armia Krajowa (J. Kamiński‘s group) carried out a raid on Isydor Mokrosh‘s pub in Životice, leaving some the Gestapo members dead, the Nazi revenge for the Germans killed cost the lives of 36 innocent men. It was the refusal of the Volksliste that also decided the fate of the witness´s family. On 6 August 1944, Josef Duda was taken a short distance from his own house, where he was shot, probably by a member of the Gestapo. The family was watching everything from the window. Like the wives of the other men, Zdeněk Duda‘s mother was left alone to look after the farm and the children. Zdeněk Duda had to help out, which is why he did not finish secondary school. When he was conscripted, he took advantage of an offer to go to work in a mine and avoid compulsory military service. Because he was still a minor, he started working at the surface of the Prezident Gottwald mine in Horní Suchá. After joining the Communist Party, he graduated from the factory labour school, where he was trained to work underground. On Thursday, 12 September 1974, on the morning shift, he boarded a cage that would take him and more than thirty other men to the work site. However, due to the effects of salt water, the cage rope broke and a violent fall ensued. Eight miners did not survive the tragedy and the witness himself ended up with a complicated fracture of his leg. After the trauma, he was unable to work in the mine any longer, so he applied for and eventually received a disability pension. Until 1995, he worked at the Gottwald Mine (after the Velvet Revolution, the František Mine) as a stoker. At the time of recording in 2024, Zdeněk Duda and his wife were living in Životice.
