Eva Stories, an innovative Instagram project designed to raise awareness of the Holocaust by bringing “a smartphone to 1944” has made a stunning debut, gathering 1 million viewers in just one day to see the tale of a young girl in Hungary during the Third Reich.

The Instagram-stylized version of the real-life Eva Heyman was first posted Wednesday on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Spearheaded by billionaire Mati Kochavi and his daughter, Maya, the project team reported Thursday it had received more than 100 million views in its first 14 hours, the Jerusalem Post reported.

“The memory of the Holocaust outside of Israel is disappearing,” Kochavi told the New York Times. “We thought, let’s do something really disruptive. We found the journal and said, ‘Let’s assume that instead of pen and paper Eva had a smartphone and documented what was happening to her.’ So we brought a smartphone to 1944.”

According to the Jerusalem Post, the project's backers said Eva Stories has been written about in 50 countries – and covered by both the Times and Washington Post among other outlets.

Though it garnered wide praise for storytelling aimed at the next generation, the IG project has its critics as well.

"It’s a display of bad taste, being promoted aggressively and crudely. And second, even worse, it’ll have ramifications," Yuval Mendelson wrote in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz. "The path from ‘Eva’s Story’ to selfies at the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau is short and steep."

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