An Instagram account that recounts the real-life story of a Jewish girl murdered in a concentration camp, by imagining she had documented her days on a smartphone, has sparked a debate about how to sensitively portray the Holocaust.

With 1.1 million followers, Eva.Stories is a high-budget visual depiction of the diary of Eva Heyman – a 13-year-old Hungarian who chronicled the 1944 German invasion of Hungary – but features hashtags, internet lingo, and emojis used by a 21st century-teenager.

Its creators, Mati Kochavi, an Israeli hi-tech billionaire who is from a family of Holocaust victims and survivors, and his daughter, Maya, produced the short videos to refresh what they see as fading memories of the genocide.

Just as Anne Frank’s diary brought the horror of Jewish life in Europe during the second world war to generations of readers after its publication in 1947, the idea was that the Instagram stories, with their short, flashy videos, might do the same today.

“If we want to bring the memory of the Holocaust to the young generation, we have to bring it to where they are,” said Mati Kochavi. “And they’re on Instagram.”

Produced with a multi-million dollar budget, 400 staff and actors, and elaborate sets including tanks and trains carriages, the stream of dozens of mini-stories were aired throughout Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day this week.

“Hi, my name is Eva. This is my page. Follow me,” says a young actor playing Eva Heyman in a trailer, dressed in a 1940s-style blue suit jacket, and filming herself selfie-style. She talks of her school crush and ambition to become a famous news photographer. Another post adds emojis of rainbows and strawberries.

The tone of the Instagram videos turn darker as the Nazis increasingly target Hungary’s Jews, confiscating Eva’s family’s business, making them wear yellow stars, and forcing them into a ghetto, before deporting them to Auschwitz death camp.

The real Eva was born in Nagyvàrad, Hungary, and lived with her grandparents after her parents divorced. She began writing her diary on her 13th birthday in February 1944 and was murdered in Auschwitz in October, eight months later. Her mother survived the Holocaust, and after liberation discovered her daughter’s diaries and had them published. She later killed herself.

The attempt to represent such a sensitive issue with a modern-day twist has attracted controversy, and there has been criticism that the project trivialises Holocaust atrocities.

In some posts, Eva’s character uses the hashtag #lifeduringwar and geotags her location as “GHETTO”. The Instagram account has been advertised in Israel with large billboards featuring a hand behind barbed wire clutching a mobile phone.

Yuval Mendelson, a musician and civics teacher, wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, that the project was “a display of bad taste, being promoted aggressively and crudely”.

Yet the vast number of followers of Eva.Stories has no doubt brought attention to a part of history that many young people know little about, especially as the number of ageing Holocaust survivors shrink. A survey last year found two-thirds of American millennials could not identify Auschwitz, the largest Nazi camp built in German-occupied Poland, and where 1.1 million people were killed between 1940 and 1945. And more than a fifth of respondents said they had not heard of the Holocaust or were not sure whether they had heard of it.

A separate study in Europe released this week found the majority of Austrians do not know that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

The Eva.Stories account’s creators have responded to the criticism, arguing Instagram is also a platform for serious content if done with care and respect. “A lot of serious movements are happening on social media,” Maya Kochavi was quoted as saying in The New York Times, adding she had strived to “maintain the sense of honour”.

And while the early vignettes include many modern-day social media effects, such as colourful graphics, they slowly fade away in later videos. The final posts recount Heyman’s death in the gas chamber in white text with a black background.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial centre, said while it was not involved in the project, “the use of social media platforms in order to commemorate the Holocaust is both legitimate and effective”.

It said it also uses social media, including Instagram, “albeit in a different style and manner”.

Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House, said whenever new media is used to portray the Holocaust it “always stirs a controversy”. He pointed to the first use of cartoons which he said are now “considered as a very good way to communicate this history”.

He added: “At the same time, I think what is really important is that we should do our utmost to make the story itself as reliable and authentic as possible.”

• This article was amended on 9 May 2019 to specify that Auschwitz was built in Poland when Poland was occupied by Germany.