#TheCube | As Israel commemorates the Holocaust on May 1 and 2, the diary of a Jewish teenage Holocaust victim is being recounted using Instagram for a social media generation.
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As Israel commemorates the Holocaust on May 1 and 2, the diary of a Jewish teenage Holocaust victim is being recounted using Instagram for a social media generation.
The account has garnered well over half a million followers and tells the tale of 13-year-old Hungarian Eva Heyman, from the times she lived as a normal young girl to being deported to a Jewish Ghetto through Instagram stories.
In the earliest stories, Heyman is seen as a lively teenager, with a teenage crush and aspirations of becoming a reporter. The mood swiftly changes with Heyman seen distressed having to wear the Star of David emblazoned on her clothes to Nazi's ransacking her family's home.
The last journal entry and Instagram story show Heyman being deported to Auchwitz where she later died in 1944. The final Instagram story was posted as the sirens rang throughout Israel for 2-minutes to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day at 10 a.m. on Thursday.
The project, produced by Mati Kochavi, an Israeli technology businessman and his daughter Maya, sparked some criticism online with questioning as to whether Instagram is an appropriate medium to portray the story of a Holocaust victim.
In response to criticism, co-producer Maya Kochavi said: "We hope that people will see the good intentions that we have and that it's only supposed to be something honourable and respectful."
"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 added.
Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the project in a video posted on Instagram, in order to "remind ourselves what we lost in the Holocaust and what was returned to us by the creation of the state of Israel".
Watch the March of the Living in the player below: