Playing pretend on social media

Abstract

Social media accounts created for Holocaust victims are a digital memorial phenomenon that has received mixed responses from the research community and the public at large. Whilst some maintain that such exercises trivialise the Holocaust, others recognise the value of these projects as a means of engaging the younger generation in a post-survivor age. This article will bring a fresh perspective to this debate by examining two such social media accounts-the Instagram account created for Eva Heyman and the Facebook page of Henio Zytomirski-as expressions of memorial engagement through imaginative play. The creation of and responses to these accounts will be analysed in terms of the interconnected themes of empathy and projective identification, and placed within the context of frequent references to dressing up and masquerade that appear in young adult Holocaust literature such as John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (Black Swan, 2006) and Jeremy Dyson's What Happens Now (Abacus, 2007). The chapter concludes by suggesting that the production and maintenance of such social media accounts could constitute productive memorial activities for teenagers, in their potential to promote the 'interaction, understanding and engagement' advocated by Gray in Contemporary Debates in Holocaust Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).