It all starts with a sweet 13 –year- old Hungarian girl, young Eva dressed in a 1940s-style blue jacket filming herself, having fun with her friend, spending quality times with her grandparents, discovering love and her ambition to become a famous news photographer.
“Hi, my name is Eva. This is my page. Follow me,” the actor, playing Eva says. It sounded like a random Instagram story, but unfortunately, it was not. This Instagram diary recounts the real-life story of a Jewish girl murdered during the Holocaust.
With more than 1,7 million followers on Instagram, the virtual diary has impacted and moved many people reaching the desired audience, according to the co-producer:
"If we want to bring the memory of the Holocaust to the young generation, we have to bring it to where they are. And they are on Instagram," said co-producer of the project, Mati Kochavi, an Israeli billionaire and victim of the Holocaust.
Through the social media, we discover the tragic story of Eva who’s life were shaken with the 1944 German invasion of her hometown. The story continues and the tone of the video turns darker as the Nazis, targeting the Hungarian Jews, force them to wear yellow stars and finally push them into the ghetto. This high-budget visual depiction is filled with Hashtags and emoji’s in order to engage the 21st century-teenager.
“The memory of the Holocaust outside of Israel is disappearing,” Mr. Kochavi said in an interview. “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.”
The real Eva was born in Navygard, the only child of a Hungarian Jewish couple, she lived with her grandparents after the divorce of her parents. She began to write her diary on her 13th birthday Feb.13th 1944, and was murdered in Auschwitz in October, a few months later. Her mother, who survived the Holocaust, found and returned her diary to Nagyvarad, which gave the possibility for her daughter to be heard and understood as she wanted to become a news photographer.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, when sirens sounded across the country, bringing the whole population to a standstill for a moment of mourning, Eva’s Instagram story came to an end.