“The memory of the Holocaust outside of Israel is disappearing,” Mr. Kochavi said in an interview. Even before the fictional Instagram account was activated, it had more than 200,000 followers, the result of an aggressive marketing campaign involving billboards and online promotions by celebrity social media influencers. Online, some Israelis have accused the Kochavis of trivializing and cheapening the Holocaust, calling the Instagram version an insult to the intelligence of today’s young people. Ridiculing the concept, many asked how Eva — who, in her diary, documented the dark nights in the ghetto without electricity — might have charged her phone. “First of all, we are talking about a display of bad taste,” Yuval Mendelson, a musician and civics teacher, wrote in an op-ed in the newspaper Haaretz.

Source: New York Times April 30, 2019 13:30 UTC