It was some months after the massacre at the Nova Music Festival on October 7 that a public display to bear witness to the atrocity was first conceived.
But for concert promoter and former IDF officer Ilan Faktor, what would become the Nova Exhibition had its origins on October 8, as he helped a search party gather items strewn across the site.
“We were collecting evidence in order to return them to their owners or the families of lost loved ones,” he recalls.
After establishing a temporary healing centre for survivors, the festival’s co-founder, DJ Omri Sasi, decided it was imperative to display what was now forensic evidence, photographed and stored in hangars by the Lahav 443 police unit.
“It’s not easy to hold this,” he says, looking back almost three years on. “I saw the survivors, I lost part of my family, I lost friends.”
Ilan, Omri and the other members of the team have spoken to the JC to reveal the untold story behind the exhibition – officially titled “06:29: The Moment Music Stood Still" – which has been touring the globe and is now in its last weeks in London.
Conceived by Omri and written and directed by Reut Feingold, the display invites visitors to bear witness to the Nova Music Festival massacre through forensic evidence.
Festival tents and signs proclaiming 'good vibes' and 'peace' (James Shaw)[Missing Credit]
At the festival, 411 people were murdered and 43 were abducted. Many were victims of sexual violence.
Surrounded by 30 tonnes of audiovisual equipment, visitors at the Nova Exhibition walk through a reconstruction of the site near kibbutz Re’im, including scorched cars, bullet-riddled toilet cubicles, and the abandoned belongings of fleeing festival-goers.
The exhibition concludes with a room of photographs, bearing the words “We Will Dance Again”, showing who was murdered at the festival or committed suicide afterwards. All proceeds go to the Tribe of Nova Foundation, which supports around 3,500 survivors and 2,500 bereaved families.
Before October 7, Omri DJ-ed under the stage name “SASI”. He was meant to perform a set at the festival. Instead he helped rescue festivalgoers with Nova’s co-founder, Ofir Amir. His uncle, his cousin, who was pregnant, and her husband were murdered.
“After two weeks, we built the Nova Refuge Centre. I would go home and feel very bad about the situation,” Omri said. “The idea came to me to make a memorial and tell the story of the people that were murdered. I thought, I could rebuild the festival inside Tel Aviv and show people what happened.”
He adds: “The survivors need help, because our country is in war and the government doesn’t give enough to them. So we became the organisation that helps these people.”
Nova survivor May Hayat (right) at the exhibition in London (Kevin Moran)[Missing Credit]
Ilan recalls: “On the one hand, we wanted to commemorate our friends. On the other hand, we needed financial support.
“Our goal from the beginning wasn't just to tell the horror, but to show the resilience of the community. One of the ways to deal with tragedy is to show it.”
Omri secured a venue from the Tel Aviv Municipality, before calling on Israeli entertainment mogul Yoni Feingold and his wife Reut Feingold to plan an exhibition that was as close to reality as possible. Within weeks of October 7, the team took to the task of recreating the festival.
“We got everything from [the police unit] as the Nova Tribe Foundation,” Ilan said. “A lady from this unit follows the exhibition and holds a catalogue of everything, because people come into the exhibition and find their shoes or sunglasses.
“Just yesterday, a girl found her Minnie Mouse pyjama top. We give them the option to take it, and it gets registered by the police.”
The survivor who found her pyjama top chose to leave it there, as most survivors do when they discover their belongings at the exhibition.
“It was difficult to deal with everything in the beginning,” Ilan said. “Everything was so sensitive. We offloaded cars and then personal items fell from [them]. We touched every T-shirt like it was in memory of its owner. Everything was done in silence and delicately.
“The first exhibition was very sad, very silent, and there were no words needed at the time. We had no signs or videos. We just staged the festival as it was, deserted.”
Omri said: “I didn’t expect that it would be a huge thing. But people came from all over the world.”
Portable toilets from Nova are among the exhibits (James Shaw)[Missing Credit]
Among the visitors was Scooter Braun, the American music executive known for discovering Justin Bieber. The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Braun arranged to bring the exhibition to the US.
The Nova Exhibition, which contains about ninety tonnes of elements, was shipped to New York in seven forty-foot containers. By April 2024, it had settled in a venue in the financial district, a short walk from Ground Zero. Each personal item was carried into the venue by hand.
“It took us a month to build,” Ilan said. “We had to bring the burned cars through the windows with cranes.”
When the exhibition reached New York, for the first time it incorporated lighting and sound, including pre-recorded interviews with survivors and bereaved families. “We added more elements to make people around the world better understand what Israelis naturally understand when they walk in,” Ilan said.
New York also hosted the first Survivors’ Delegation, a two-week rota of survivors who share their testimony in the exhibition’s Healing Room.
Among those in London’s Healing Room is May Hayat, Manager of the Survivors’ Delegation, who was working as a bartender at the festival.
“I feel like my soul is alive again,” said May, who escaped abduction when the car that was going to take her into Gaza would not start. She played dead among victims’ bodies under the festival stage until the army rescued her.
“I’m here for survivors and their bereaved families. If it’s too emotional for them, I’m doing their shifts,” May said. “It’s not easy at all. It’s triggering. But it’s important. It’s our duty. This is our gift to our community… After every exhibition, I feel much stronger and positive than I was before.”
When the New York exhibition was met with protests and accused of being pro-Israel “propaganda”, the subsequent press attention extended its stay by a month. “In my perspective, there hasn't been enough protest,” Ilan said. “Protest brings more people.”
The Nova Exhibition has drawn over 600,000 attendees since its first ten-week stint in Tel Aviv. After New York, venues opened in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Miami, Toronto, Washington D.C., and Berlin. The response was overwhelming. Ilan recalled Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s last Shah, signing the Toronto exhibition’s Hostage Wall.
It was thanks to the determined campaigning of a London-based events planner, Jo Woolfe, that the exhibition came to the capital in May this year.
“In the two years I was planning the exhibition coming here, people said, ‘people won’t come, the non-Jews won’t come, the schools won’t come’,” said Jo, the London Exhibition Head.
“They’ve come. We know that 35% minimum of the over 20,000 people coming through the door are non-Jews. They haven’t just been a token non-Jew – they may have been politicians, they may have been police, they may have been NHS.”
Jo Woolfe, Ofer Amir and Sara Dein[Missing Credit]
After October 7, Jo used her experience in events to lead hostage support initiatives, founding JW3’s Empty Shabbat Table and the Shabbat Candle Campaign. When she discovered the exhibition had no plans to come to London, she decided to make it happen herself.
“It’s the truth slap-bang in your face,” she said, recalling the chilling reality of holding someone’s mobile phone after they have been murdered. “You’re in a room full of things that belonged to kids having fun.
“Visiting Re’im is important. But it doesn’t help you understand who these people are, what they went through, what they heard and saw. This does all the above.
“Donors would ask what’s the point, what’s the impact. One day my answer was, ‘When they built the 9/11 museum, they didn’t know who was going to come. I can’t tell you.’”
It took two years to raise the required £2.5 million, via donors and an online fundraiser, facilitated by the UK-based charity United Jewish Israel Appeal.
Two major London venues rejected the exhibition after being informed of its purpose, but Jo soon secured a venue in Shoreditch, owned by Jonathan Goldstein of Cain International.
“Potential donors, who became actual donors, said, ‘if you’re putting this in a Jewish area, we are not donating’. Ultimately, yes, Jews should come,” said Jo, who is Jewish. “But that isn’t who this is for. That isn’t the point of the exhibition. The point is to educate.”
As Co-Chair Sara Dein reached out to MPs and various charities, the influx jumped from 250 people – “quite high”, Jo said – to at least 600 visitors daily, and on some days even 800 to 1,000. “We wanted to have the most diverse audience possible through the door,” Sara said.
While the exhibition requires 24/7 security, it has not faced any disruption in London. It has been visited by music executives, Muslim youth groups, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
“People don't find a reason to protest this exhibition because it's not about nationalism or religion. It's about a music festival that was attacked, murdered and raped. It's quite difficult to protest such a story,” Ilan said.
“Nowhere is there an Israeli flag,” Jo said. “Nowhere is there a Jewish symbol. It just shows you what happened to human beings who went to dance at a festival, on a Jewish holiday. If they were very religious, they wouldn’t have been there.
“You walk through the whole exhibition, and there you are in front of a survivor or bereaved family member. What you don’t have is someone angry that their loved ones are murdered, or angry that that they’ve seen things they shouldn’t have seen.”
“This is how we deal with terror and trauma. We never stop dancing,” Omri said.
Jo is speaking to European cities to secure the next location, while plans for a permanent venue, in Re’im or in New York, are under way.
Due to demand, the London exhibition will lengthen its stay for an additional ten days. Anyone who wishes to extend the run can donate here: https://ujia.jotform.com/261733894278067
The Nova Exhibition London is open in Shoreditch until 15 July. Tickets and information available at www.novaexhibition.com.
Net proceeds will go towards supporting Nova Music Festival survivors and bereaved families.
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