About eva.stories

On the occasion of Yom HaShoa (Holocaust Remembrance Day) an intriguing Instagram project was launched from Israel worldwide: eva.stories. 

Featuring the last nine months from the life of Eva Heyman, killed in Auschwitz in October 1944, it uses the tools of social media to document the daily realities through the eyes of a young Jewish girl facing everyday anti-Semitism, racism, life in the ghetto and finally, death.

Produced with the financial support of the Haifa-born high-tech Zurich-based billionaire Mati Kochavi - who also produced and even written some episodes of Dark Net - the project was mostly aimed at a target of young Israeli between 13 and 30 years old. Spoken in English with an European accent, it has Hebrew substitles and it was featured as Instagram-stories starting with the evening of the 1st of May.

The film, which was shoot in the Western Ukrainian city of Lvov, is based on the dairy of Eva Heyman, born in the then Hungarian city of Nagyvarad (nowadays Oradea, in Romania). 

Once upon a time, I was crazily enthusiastic about the power of social media. I used to think for a long time that a social media network and a fast reliable Internet connection can change lives, the world, and it helps to counter discrimination and all the ills of the past century. However, many of the warnings expressed not so long about by Evgeny Morozov in The Net Delusion are unfortunatelly becoming everyday realities. Internet and social networks can be easily used to control, spread fake news and manipulate minds. 

I am a full supporter of the idea that any kinds of injustices and discrimination and anti-semitic and racist manifestations shall be carefull documented and shared to the world. But it is enough? Anne Frank and Eva Heyman and many others wrote diaries and their testimonies were important in revealing the realities of those terrible times. Writing, especially journaling and photography printed on paper were the ways in which memories were created at the time. Nowadays we have Instagram stories and Facebook live and blogging. 

The sad truth of eva.stories is that even she had a smart phone and apparently Internet also in the concentration camp, she couldn't do anything but sharing the stories to the world. No one come to her rescue or made a world campaign to stop the atrocities. The Germans who took her and her family to Auschwitz did not change their mind. Eva died and the fact that even her last moments were documented on social media sounded kitsch to me. 

It is not what I would have expected to happen If a Girl in the Holocaust Had Instagram.