In a remote mountainside village, a frightened Czech family struggles under the privations of Nazi occupation, with food rationed and Gestapo spies everywhere, as German soldiers patrol the streets.
The scene is not a costume drama, but the first episode of a controversial new Czech TV reality show that features a modern-day family living among actors who play Nazi soldiers and the hamlet’s other residents, in an attempt to recreate life under the Nazis during World War II.
Three generations of the family eat meager rations, dress in the style of the era and endure the daily hardship their predecessors would have experienced after Hitler’s 1939 invasion of the country.
Recorded in summer last year and shown on public broadcaster Ceska Televize, the eight scheduled episodes of Holiday in the Protectorate are set in the majority Czech-ethnic Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, areas of the Czech Republic then ruled by a puppet government established by the Nazis.
“I spent a long time looking for a concept that would allow me to show life in another era, while ensuring the highest level of authenticity,” director Zora Cejnkova said.
The concept has stirred angry reactions far beyond the Czech Republic, even by the standards of a television genre rarely noted for its cultural sensitivity.
“Fortunately for the family, they will not be treated like the 82,309 Jews who lived in the Protectorate and were deported by the Nazis to concentration and death camps, or were killed by Czech collaborators,” one columnist in the Times of Israel wrote. “Critics ask whether ‘Big Brother Auschwitz’ is next,” a wry subhead to the column online said.
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