While it started as a COVID-19 lockdown project and a way to collate his Holocaust survivor great-grandmother's testimony, Dov Forman's TikTok project landed him on TIME magazine's list of 100 Most Influential Creators last week.
The 21-year-old Londoner spoke to The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday about the "incredible honor" of being featured on the list.
Forman's grandmother, Lily Ebert, was passionate about telling her story of surviving Auschwitz, where she was from July to October 1944. She was then transferred to a subcamp of Buchenwald, where she remained until the 1945 death march. After the war, she moved to Israel and then to the UK in 1967 and had three children, ten grandchildren, 38 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild. She passed away in October 2024.
Forman, one of her great-grandchildren, decided to start interviewing Ebert and recording her testimony during coronavirus, partly as a way of immortalising her story and partly as a way of spreading awareness and holocaust education, he told the Post.
Forman also co-authored the book Lily's Promise: How I Survived Auschwitz and Found the Strength to Live in 2021, which became a five-time Sunday Times bestseller and four-time New York Times bestseller.
The use of TikTok made Forman and Ebert's project a little more unique: the two were able to reach large audiences, with clips often garnering over a million views. The TikToks contained clips of Ebert answering people's questions about surviving the Holocaust and sharing her memories.
"One post went viral and we just ran with it," he told the Post. "Suddenly, we were getting all of these comments and questions from people who said they didn't know these stories."
He added that the number of living Holocaust survivors is dwindling, so the opportunity to speak to survivors directly is diminishing too. "Most people never have the opportunity to speak to survivors," he told the Post. This made his project all the more meaningful as it allowed audiences the chance to interact with his grandmother through questions and comments, rather than simply reading her story.
Using social media to connect young people with Holocaust survivors
"We were the first people on social media, presenting young people an opportunity to ask questions to survivors."
While Forman received (and continues to receive) thousands of antisemitic comments and questions, many of them are more indicative of ignorance and a lack of education, he explained.
Forman told the Post that this was particularly the case with young Americans, for whom Holocaust education is only mandated on a state level.
He spoke of odd questions, such as someone asking, "Why did you choose Auschwitz?"
Nevertheless, questions showed people "want to learn," he stressed, and "how incredible is that?"
While Ebert passed last year, Forman said he has "hundreds of more videos left to share." Additionally, "while the page started for her, it has morphed into other survivors and their testimony."
He also said there has been "plenty more to share since October 7," noting that he was set to meet with two former hostages later that day to share their stories on TikTok.
While antisemitism continues to rise, Forman believes Holocaust education has a role to play in mitigating it.
"If you want to change the future, you have to learn from the past," he said. "Antisemitism today shows that Holocaust Education may not have worked in the way we hoped, but that doesn't mean we should give up."
"The gas chambers didn't fall from the sky," he continued. "It went from words to violence, to neighbors turning on neighbors, to genocide."
He drew parallels with the way Jews felt before and after October 7 to the way Jews felt in Nazi Germany when their neighbors turned on them.
"How is it that from one day to the next, the people we played with, sat in lecture halls with, lived next door to, turned on us so quickly?"
The current antisemitic surge does not however indicate another Holocaust is on its way, Forman noted, adding that while there may be echoes of the past the current, "we have to be careful because the Holocaust was unique and the worst human tragedy in human history."
"October 7 was the worst tragedy [Jews faced] since the Holocaust, but it wasn't the Holocaust."
Given the Holocaust is such a focus of his magnum opus, the Post asked Forman how he feels about the use of Holocaust comparisons to other scenarios.
"When non-Jews weaponize the language of the Holocaust against us, it's pure antisemitism," he said. "It desecrates the memory of the Holocaust, it becomes a political stick, and this is antisemitic, it's twisting history, accusing the Jews of the very thing that happened to us.
Circling back to the TIME recognition of him as an influential creator, Forman called it an "incredible honour."
TIME said, "With a new report estimating that 70% of Holocaust survivors will no longer be alive in the next decade, Forman and Ebert’s digital storytelling serves as a tool for remembrance and education."
"We are living in a time with so much antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and Holocaust distortion, so the fact that TIME has recognized the work that I've done, and how important that Holocaust work is, is quite incredible in this day and age," said Forman.
He concluded by giving "a message of hope and strength."
"There is a light at the end of the tunnel, that's not without us fighting for it," he said.
"It's easy to complain about how bad antisemitism is, but what are you doing to change the narrative?"