The Nova Exhibition, which honours the memory of the 378 people murdered by Hamas at the music festival, lays bare the barbarism of October 7, 2023 for all to see. Dotted throughout the exhibition, alongside belongings recovered from the scene like clothing, shoes, tents, posters and mobile phones, are notes written by members of the public responding to the exhibition. One of them stuck out to me. It simply read “this happened on our watch”.
I couldn’t have prevented what happened on October 7. But I can play my part in stopping the wave of antisemitism that has overwhelmed this country since that day. Part of that work lies in the act of witnessing. Of seeing for myself what happened. Remembering it. Ensuring others see it too – the proof that, wherever the ideology comes from, antisemitism can be mobilised to commit unspeakable crimes.
As I moved through the exhibition, I found myself thinking about memory and how we approach it. For me, much of this comes from studying the Holocaust and working with Holocaust survivors. I’ve long been an advocate of the idea that in order to understand the antisemitism running rampant in the world today, we need to understand the Holocaust too. What happened, how it happened, through the hateful ideology of a few, but also through the indifference and complicity of many. Why it is relevant to contemporary society.
Holocaust education is not enough on its own to tackle antisemitism, but it is an essential step towards understanding where antisemitism can – and has – led when left unchecked.
This is not to draw comparison of any kind between these two vastly different events. But there is a reason why October 7 is continually referred to as “the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust”. The specific, profoundly traumatic nature of what happened on October 7, including at the Nova festival site, cuts deeply for many Jews, whose collective identity and memory is shaped by the pain of the Holocaust. The emotional resonance, the barbarity of the killings, the fact that Jews were murdered simply because they were Jews.
The exhibition itself draws on many tools of memorialisation that might typically be found in a Holocaust-related museum or exhibition. Rows of candles, an act of commemoration deeply linked to Holocaust memory, through Holocaust Memorial Day, and the traditions of memorialisation in Jewish faith and culture. Tables full of shoes and clothing, seeking to individualise the victims and ensure their memory is not confined to a single statistic. Walls lined with photos of those murdered at the Nova site, urging us to remember each of their faces.
As I looked through the names and photos of those who lost their lives at the festival, but also those who survived, I also thought about testimony and survivorship. There is a vast literature on oral testimony as a methodology for understanding and commemorating history. In the context of the Holocaust, several renowned scholars had profoundly impactful yet radically different ways of approaching it.
Claude Lanzmann, whose film Shoah is credited as a key work in shaping discussion of the Holocaust in public consciousness, felt that survivors should continue to share, even when it was deeply difficult and they were reluctant to do so, owing to a sense of duty to tell the story and ensure others bear witness.
Dori Laub, who founded the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, by contrast pioneered a unique therapeutic approach which focused on empathy and psychological protection of the witness, sacrificing historical accuracy to avoid triggering pain for the survivor: if they didn’t want to talk about something, he didn’t press. Working as a psychiatrist in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur war, Laub treated soldiers suffering from psychological trauma, and later applied his approach to interviews with Holocaust survivors. He saw survivors talking about what happened as a way for them to become “more whole”.
It’s then perhaps no surprise that projects to document testimony from October 7 and support Nova survivors have drawn significantly on Laub’s approach. Edut 710 is a project to gather testimony from October 7 survivors. The Tribe of Nova Foundation employs an approach grounded in holistic therapy and community building to support survivors of the massacre in working through the trauma.
Approaching testimony as a method of historical documentation after October 7 requires a different approach, not least because of the temporal immediacy to the event. The fact that such an approach is possible is of course all to do with the times we live in. For years survivors of the Holocaust didn’t talk about what happened to them. Not only because it was too painful, but because there was no public or political will for them to do so either. For a long time the world did not know the full scale of what happened, or even have the terminology to describe it.
Now, things are different. Nova survivors are here, present, telling their stories. I can’t help but feel deeply sad thinking about what could have been, if the world had wanted to have the conversation about what happened 81 years ago earlier. How many survivors are out there whose stories we will never know, because they never got the chance to talk? Echoes of this are present in the exhibition, and within the entire philosophy underpinning the work of the Tribe of Nova Foundation – part of their work even includes dialogue between Holocaust survivors and Nova survivors.
When I left the exhibition, I was struck by the sense that this was not only about documentation, but also about memory and legacy. The community is determined to ensure that something good emerges from something so awful. Indeed, much already has.
Many Holocaust survivors, in giving their testimony, have spoken of their hope for the future – and for the next generation to carry their legacy forward. This exhibition is a powerful answer to that call to action.
Evie Robinson is external affairs officer at the Antisemitism Policy Trust
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