Hoping to enliven fading Holocaust memories, Israeli entrepreneurs have dramatized the plight of a Jewish teenager murdered by the Nazis by imagining her documenting her final months over social media.
"What if a girl in the Holocaust had Instagram?" asks a trailer for the "Eva Stories" project that launches ahead of Wednesday's Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel.
Dozens of Instagram video posts will show a cast in period costume and locations acting out passages from the diary of Eva Heyman, a 13-year-old Hungarian deported to her death in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.
Video: Reuters
The vignettes, between three seconds and three minutes, were the brainchild of high-tech and media entrepreneur Mati Kochavi and his daughter Maya.
The project was endorsed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
There has been some criticism that an Instagram version of the Holocaust was not an appropriate approach.
Such controversy over historical representation of the Holocaust is not new, said Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann of the Hebrew University's communication department, who supported using social media to reach younger generations.
Maya Kochavi said day-to-day troubles Eva dealt with, such as her parents' divorce, a crush on a boy, and hopes of one day being famous, would likely strike a chord with young people and draw them in as the war gradually closes in on her.
"There's a lot that young kids will really feel and relate to and hopefully this continues as her journey becomes more difficult and she starts to experience some of the more horrific parts of the story," Kochavi said.
