Eva’s Stories is the title of an Instagram account that republishes the diary of Éva Heyman, a Jewish girl who was killed in Auschwitz with 13 years of age. It is a media campagne that launched to prepare for the Jom Hasoa, the Israeli Holocaust remembrance day which is held today.
Because Instagram is mostly popular among teens, the aim of the account is to bring them closer to the tragedy that happened more than 70 years ago. Éva Heyman kept her diary for a timespan of 3,5 years until she was deported from her hometown Nagyvárad/Oradea in May 1944.
Her mother survived the Holocaust. She found and published her daughter’s diary more than 50 years ago. The Israeli initiative aims to bring attention to the story once again, so that Éva never gets forgotten.
The Instagram account and the media campagne related to it was funded by Mati Kochávi, an Israeli CEO of an IT company. The Instagram account had more than 100 000 followers on Tuesday and Éva’s diary launched on it yesterday, on the night before Jom Hasoa. At the same time, billboards and online trailers draw attention to it as well.
From yesterday on, video messages will be shared where actors and actresses recall what happened to Éva in 1944 in Hungary: from discriminative laws through the ghetto until the transports to Auschwitz.
Éva recorded in her diary that her dream is to move to London and work as a photo journalist. As Mati Kochávi points out, the project can be interpreted as a late fulfillment of this dream. The diary turns to video clips and Éva “gets” a smartphone to publish her story not only in London newspapers but in the medium of the whole world: the internet.
400 people work on the video recordings in Lviv, Ukraine, and a lot of Israeli influencers, celebrities and even Benjamin Netanjahu declared to advertise the Instragram account.
Some people say that this fictive account of a murdered person is disrespectful, others in Haarec say that Israeli youth is smarter than the organizers think and do not need such a method to reflect on horrible events of the past. Still others claim that no matter what the methods and the media are – the question is solely the quality of revoking Éva Heyman’s memory.
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