An Instagram Story about the who was murdered in Auschwitz Eva Heymann is clicked millions of times. The creators want to keep up in a digital Generation, the memory of the Holocaust. But the project is controversial.
Advertising for eve.stories in Tel Aviv
“Today, I’m 13! Eating ice cream with my Cousin!” A shaky cell phone video. A girls voice is heard, then Laughter. Someone runs in the direction of a Eiswagens, past a swastika flag. The camera turns and we see Eva. She is the main character of eva.stories, a Video project in English with Hebrew sub-titles, tells the true story of the Hungarian Jew Eva Heymann.
Eva was a girl who liked to dance, photo wanted to be a journalist, and by the Nazis in October 1944 in Auschwitz, was murdered. 13. In February 1944, 13. Birthday, she begins a diary, leading up to their Deportation in June. Therefore, Eva Heymann is also called the Hungarian Anne Frank.
Accusation of the trivialization
Eve’s diary entries are in eva.stories in 70 short video clips to life. We follow the everyday life of the girl from the occupation of Hungary by the Wehrmacht until their Transport to the extermination camps. And so, as she possessed at the time, a Smartphone and an Instagram Account, and themselves and their surroundings on film.
This provides for some users for irritation: The greatest horrors of the 20th century. Century, shown on a platform, which is known for often superficial entertainment and Selfie-self-marketing in rich colors? Some people fear that the mass murder of the Jews could be played down as a result.
There are hardly any witnesses still time
However, the creators of the project, the Israeli high-tech millionaire, Mati Kochavi, and his daughter, Maya, to see Instagram as the ideal platform to convey to a young Generation the history of the Holocaust. “In the digital age, with its short attention span and the constant search for Thrills, as well as in view of the dwindling number of Survivors, we need to find new ways of remembering and Reporting,” says the 57-year-old Kochavi, according to a press release. eva.stories wants to use “Social Media for a new kind of remembrance. Thus, we hope, the users of eve’s life and her innermost feelings and thoughts to convey,” says Kochavi.
Eva Heymann 1944 – just a few months before she was murdered
In the production of around 400 technicians, actors and extras from all over the world have contributed. You should have cost several million dollars. In Israel, eva.stories with a poster campaign advertised. Even before eva.stories on Israeli Holocaust remembrance day on 1. May went online had spread a short Trailer on the net. According to reports, the Videos have been clicked on Instagram within only 14 hours, more than 100 million Times.
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Target group all Israelis at the age of 13 to 30 years. Also, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made on the Twitter advertising for the Format. “I would like to encourage each individual to tell also stories about those who were murdered in the Holocaust,” said Netanyahu. “The way the world should understand, so we should remind ourselves of what we have lost – and what we won back.”
Selfies in Auschwitz-Birkenau
The Videos provide far more than Israel, for resonance. The Instagram Account of the White house with his nearly five million followers, campaigned for the project, which is now followed by more than 1.2 million people online. Yasmine Levi, the Vice-editor-in-chief of the Israeli Online women’s magazine “Saloona” called eva.stories of “brilliant, innovative, and precise” and wrote that she would watch the Videos with her 12-year-old daughter, who could identify with Eva and insight into a cruel reality of the get.
In the social media, the project by many of the users praised also for that prefer, especially younger people in its spell. Exactly that was their goal, says the 27-year-old Maya Kovachi, who has initiated the project together with her father. You have chosen for eve’s diaries as a template, because “you can identify a young person of the year 2019.”
On Instagram, the Videos chronologically each of the days are associated with
eva.stories is criticized by some, however, it was the remembrance of a Social Media platform to be the wrong place for the Holocaust. In a column in the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, the social studies teacher Yuval Mendelson accused the people responsible for “bad taste” and wrote that the project will have to follow. “The way of eva.stories to Selfies of young people at the entrance gate of Auschwitz-Birkenau is short,” says Mendelson. “A fictional Instagram Account of a girl who was murdered in the Holocaust, may not be legitimate.”
A question of age
The different valuation of the project could also be related to the age of the users. Sivan Melnick Yaniv, granddaughter of a Holocaust Survivor, wrote on Facebook that her 12-year-old daughter, eva.stories great would be to to learn more. Her father does not understand, however, how one could orchestrate such a horrible story on so-cheesy way. For their parents, the combination of the Holocaust and Instagram was “incomprehensible”, says Yaniv of the DW. “For Digital Natives like my daughter, however, the combination is, of course, because you are accustomed to Smartphones for every type of message will be used.” You self-assessed the project as “brilliant, good, and innovative.”
In Israel, eva.stories discussed much
The Holocaust-memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, told DW, “the use of Social Media to commemorate the Holocaust for both legitimate as well as effective.” Yad Vashem itself on a variety of platforms, including Instagram. “Our Posts include always the use of authentic Material and historical facts. We make sure that the content is both relevant for the Public as well as the theme.” Yad Vashem knows of eva.stories also published the creators. The memorial site is not involved in the project.
Sivan Melnick Yaniv emphasizes, “the many layers and the horrors of the Holocaust can be taught in any single Medium ever appropriate. And yet it is to remind us of our responsibility as humanity to remember and to convey this story to future generations.” Yaniv hopes that eva.stories is a step in this direction.