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On Holocaust Remembrance Day 2018, a survey was released by the Claims Conference indicating a significant lack of Holocaust knowledge among adults in the United States. The survey suggested seven out of 10 Americans believe fewer people care about the Holocaust than they used to.
In light of last year’s striking response, an Israeli media project was developed to help raise more awareness about the Holocaust around the world through social media.
For the past few weeks, billboards across Israel were covered in ads that asked the viewing audience: What if a girl during the Holocaust had Instagram? The billboards call on young adults to envision the stories and narratives that could have been shared if social media existed during World War II.
Instagram page Eva.stories seeks to recreate a young Jewish girl’s experiences during the Holocaust through a social media lens. An actress portrays the real life character of Eva Heyman, a 13 year old from Nagyvárad, Hungary.
Through selfies, photos and video clips, Heyman’s life unfolds as she tries to document her family’s persecution at the hands of the Nazis. All content shared in the social media series is based on Heyman’s diary, which she began writing February 13, 1944. Heyman was deported to Auschwitz three months later, where she was murdered.
The creation of this project was launched by tech entrepreneur Mati Kochavi, who wrote the script, funded the production and directed the story on set in Lvov, Ukraine. Kochavi hopes this project will expose more young people around the world to the Holocaust by utilizing a popular platform.
“The memory of the Holocaust outside of Israel is disappearing,” Mr. Kochavi said in an interview with ABC News. “We thought, let’s do something really disruptive. We found the journal and said, ‘Let’s assume that instead of pen and paper Eva had a smartphone and documented what was happening to her.’ So we brought a smartphone to 1944.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly urged Israelis to follow Eva.stories and use social media as a way to share the stories of survivors. According to The Times of Israel, Netanyahu believes the world needs to “remind ourselves what we lost in the Holocaust and what was returned to us by the creation of the state of Israel.”
While Kochavi has received a lot of positive feedback regarding the project’s launch, critics have vocalized concerns, calling the project crude, inappropriate and in bad taste. Opponents to the campaign are against the use of selfie-culture to deal with such a serious topic. They fear the project trivializes the atrocities Jewish people experienced during the Holocaust and the pain that followed. Some people worry survivors may find the project offensive.
Scholars wonder whether the efforts will have a lasting impact or if it all will simply be regarded as a media stunt.
For Kovachi, there’s a great need for new ways to share testimonies and preserve memories of the Holocaust.
“In the digital age, when the attention span is low but the thrill span is high, and given the dwindling number of survivors, it is imperative to find new models of testimony and memory,” Kochavi said in a statement.
He sees social media as a modern form of communication, where it is acceptable to address serious topics and issues.
By sharing Heyman’s story on Instagram, Kochavi seeks to make narratives about the Holocaust accessible to more people and to spark dialogue in the international community.
