The Lidice memorial complex,
20 kilometers northwest of Prague, in the Czech Republic, recently tried a controversial
idea for attracting attention. At the link totalburnout.cz
visitors were introduced to a game in which they could choose between a flame thrower
or hand granades for the purpose of destroying the village of Lidice. Once a visitor
started the game, a message came up asking, "What are you playing here? In Lidice it
was not a game, but reality."

Lidice was the scene of a Nazi massacre in June of 1942. It was made into a monumental
memorial ensemble by the communist government, but because of its strong association
with communist propaganda, it lost state funding after 1989 and no longer
attracted much attention from society. The
advertizing gimick, to get Czech youth who today don't know much of anything
about the country's history under Nazi occupation to remember the site, worked.
More than 100,000 people from around the world visited the webpage. The number of
visitors to the memorial complex more than doubled.

Since 2000, the site has been state supported again. According to Klaus Brill writing for the Süddeutsche Zeitung (4-5 November, 2006, p. 3), the memorial has now even become a site for weddings over the past year and half. "Lidice is also using soft promotion."