Dovolená v protektorátu (English: Holiday in the Protectorate) is a 2015 original format created by Zora Cejnkova, an independent director/producer/screenplay writer for Czech Television, the public television broadcaster in the Czech Republic. The series, first aired on 23 May 2015, is available online (in the Czech language) Initially and mistakenly publicised as a 'reality' show, the programme was attacked on line by two people who thought it was a reality show along the lines of Big Brother and that it was a competition of sorts. This was three weeks before broadcast. Two online comments (from 40) such as 'what next? Big brother Auschwitz?' on Expats.cz originally published by Blesk but removed by the request of Czech Television and replaced These comments were picked up by Agence France-Presse in Prague and spread to the international press and repeated across the world without anyone checking if any of this was actually true and 1–3 weeks before the programme was aired. (This includes most of the British Press such as the The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times, the Daily Mail etc.). The show has been criticized for its alleged trivialization of the suffering real wartime survivors for instance the Times of Israel article which was also cited across the world and again this was some time before the actual broadcast, when one had actually seen it, and made many serious errors of fact, such as claiming an active Czech participation in the holocaust.
Contents
In response to the media story only the BBC World Service interviewed the creator before the programme was shown. A number of media including the Austrian broadcaster ORF the German TV, ZDF and ARD the German Suddeutscher Zeitung, Associated Press and Reuters all sent reporters after the first episode. The Prager Zeitung sent a reporter was typical of those reporting who had actually seen the broadcasts and was positive. The New York Times also sent a reporter who made several errors of fact, such as 'it is only a game'. The Hollywood Reporter initially repeated the Big Brother Auschwitz angle then investigated, held an interview and then printed 8 hours later Zora Cejnkova's defense, the only newspaper to do so. No Newspaper replied to complaints about their factual errors. The Czech press (and many people critical of the concept) could not believe that people could enter an artificial world and enter the situation as 'real'. They remain very critical. They also neglected to investigate or get informed or repeated lies and slander without checking the facts The critics themselves were also heavily criticised for very poor standards of journalism with regard to this programme
Background
Zora Cejnkova is a prize winning documentary maker mostly in historical, crime, and travel themes. Some of these used actors for recreation of scenes. Impressed by Wall/Channel 4's 1940s house, Zimbardo's 1970s Stanford prison experiment and the BBCs the Experiment,. A top Czech psychologist she had worked with before, Slavomil Hubalek, was asked if the concept could work i.e. how much a family could enter a created situation with some believability? He advised that if they could find a family that was empathic and communicated well with each other, the project should work if they were well isolated from the outside world. This is in line with many psychology experiments since the 1960s and discussed in detail by Haslam and Reicher and the references therein. The plasticity of people when placed under artificial situations is not generally appreciated by the general public or its quite significant implications generally understood. The principle is that when placed into an artificial situation, most people react as if this situation is real. This is why the new format is called by the writer 'Situation Drama' to distance it from reality shows such as Big Brother. The actors are used to considerably enhance the situations. They had to improvise to keep the situations going, much in the way that Milgram used an actor in his 'torture' experiments in 1963. This placement of subjects into artificial situations is often used as a serious tool by scientists to study how people react, as detailed by Haslam and Reicher above. For instance how would you react to the conditions of World War II. Would you collaborate? Actively resist? This is one of the aspects of this series. Prominent Czech historians were engaged, Jan Boris Uhlir and Marie Michlova, to minutely check the veracity of all aspects of the series.
The series
The series of 8 episodes was written with a serious intent, called a Situation Drama, and not as a reality show, to illustrate how life was for ordinary Czechs during the occupation where some 360,000 perished (including some 80,000 Jews) and 400,000 were used as slave labour Also the series was designed to be thought provoking. Great care was placed in ensuring authenticity and archive material together with narration was used to provide the wider background of the war. The family was chosen carefully from over one hundred interested in participating. There was no element of a competition (i.e. therefore not a game), and appeared so only for the purposes of the main sponsor. The one million crowns was for compensation for lost salaries and for motivation. An isolated farmhouse was redecorated in period style but some technical equipment was installed including electrical lighting on safety grounds (more typical kerosene lamps were rejected as a fire hazard and too low a light output for the cameras). After a period of settling in and getting used to the period low rations and other laws of the protectorate. The radio brought information on the developing critical situation regarding the 3rd Reich. The course of the war in Europe was compressed into 8 weeks, each week bringing a new challenge. Situations were created by actors such as the seller (who also brought news and some black market goods), representing the full scale of characters during the war, from collaborators to resistance fighters, German soldiers and of course the Gestapo.
The situations were written to create a coherent story
Results
Although the Czech media continues to be antagonistic, viewing figures were healthy and over 1 million downloads from the web page. Teenagers especially were gripped by the series and in some cases demanded more history lessons about the period. The programme was chosen by the Eurovision Creative Forum Berlin 2015 as one of the 22 best innovative programmes of all European Broadcasting Union member countries in 2015 and was awarded 2nd place. Several foreign broadcasters have expressed interest in licensing the format.