A Holocaust victim's diary comes to life as poignant Instagram stories

When Eva Heyman turned 13, she did what many young teenagers do—she started keeping a diary. The entries give an intimate peek into her life: learning to dance, dreaming of becoming a reporter, getting ice cream with Pista Vadas, the cute boy at school.

But Eva’s diary isn’t a happy one. She writes of soldiers in the streets, of family members taken away, of tanks and guns and protests. And three months later, Eva’s diary ends. It was Hungary, in 1944, and she was Jewish. Eva was sent to Auschwitz, the concentration camp where she would die.

Today, May 1, is Yom Hashoah in Israel, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and for 24 hours, a new Instagram campaign imagines what it would have been like if Eva, a real-life victim born in 1931, had had access to social media during the Nazi invasion of her hometown. “Eva’s Stories” are video vignettes that run between three seconds and three minutes and recreate Eva’s life with actors, extras and period clothing all designed to bring her tale and the atrocities she witnessed to life for a new generation of young people used to immediate connectivity.

The project is the brainchild of tech entrepreneur Matti Kohavi and his daughter Maya, who worked with Leo Burnett Israel to create 50 videos, filmed in Lviv, Ukraine. Every half hour, a new video hits “Eva’s” Instagram profile, following her family as they are forced to move to the ghetto. When the country observes a minute of silence to remember the victims of the Holocaust, Eva’s final story will air, showing her right before she boards the train to Auschwitz.

Even before any of Eva’s stories ran, the Instagram profile had garnered more than 120,000 followers with a billboard campaign in Israel and an influencer campaign distributing a trailer for the project that describes its purpose. As the stories run, the account has more than 400,000 followers.

The idea is reminiscent of the Cannes Lions Grand Prix-winning "Evert 45" campaign, for Dutch Telecom company KPN via agency N=5, which brought to life the stories of Dutch WWII veterans via modern-day social media channels.