The sounds of gunshots and blaring car horns filled the air of a hastily abandoned campsite, joining the smell of smoke and incense. A white light flashed above the burned remains of cars.
This scene isn’t in Israel, but an immersive experience in Washington, D.C., showcasing the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Open to the public beginning on Saturday, the Nova Music Festival Exhibition featured video testimonials from survivors and remnants of the festival including tents, portable toilets, clothing and other unclaimed belongings.
“The general idea was to show a festival that was attacked and deserted, so we decided to leave all the music in the background and to stage the camping area and everything that was left behind,” Ilan Faktor, the producer of the exhibition, said.
He said the entire exhibition, which he began work on in December 2024, is based on evidence and photos taken from the site of the Nova Music Festival.
In the camping area on the first floor, dirt and green leaves crunched underfoot. The planted trees around the exhibit reflected Israeli vegetation.
“We try to move our senses, so real trees and the earth and the soil is part of it. The smell of incense, the smoke, the visuals, of course the audio as well,” Faktor said.
“If you see the reaction of the survivors [of Oct. 7] when they come in, they’re always shocked to see how identical it is to what happened there in reality. We’re very pleased that we were able to do it properly and accurately.”
The details were so realistic that Moran Stella Yanai, who was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, said she had an anxiety attack when she walked in: “It’s still hard for me.”
In between the large walls of text and life-size scenes were screens playing footage from Oct. 7 and survivors’ testimonies.
Millet Ben Haim, a survivor of the Nova Music Festival, works with the Tribe of Nova Foundation, an Israeli nonprofit organization founded by the producers of the exhibition.
D.C. is her latest stop with the exhibition, having traveled to New York, Los Angeles and Toronto before the nation’s capital.
“I find it very difficult to go through all the horrific videos and the actual remains of what happened, but at the same time, it happened,” Ben Haim said. “So as hard as it is, I feel like we are all under the responsibility to bear witness, to understand what happened, to make sure it never happens again.”
On the second floor, psychedelic patterns swirled over stereo speakers next to an empty bar. Multiple black-painted walls featured photos of the more than 380 people killed in the Hamas attack. A table held dozens of pairs of shoes and belongings found at the site of the Nova Music Festival with testimony from the volunteers who uncovered the evidence days after Oct. 7.
An adjacent room showcased the Tribe of Nova Foundation’s efforts to rehabilitate survivors and bereaved families since Oct. 7.
Yanai and Faktor spoke to the importance of witnessing forensic evidence from the day of the attack because they said too many people get their news from social media and the mainstream media, which could contain misinformation.
“It’s important for anyone in the world to see it firsthand because all you see is stories or you hear it over the media or social media, it might be manipulated, and people lose sense of reality,” Faktor said. “By bringing this exhibition, it’s something you cannot doubt.”
Yanai, as someone who was freed after 54 days in captivity.
“One of the things that happened to me after I came back to Israel, after I was released, they told me people denied what happened that day,” Yanai recalled, adding that she was “frightened” by this denial.
The creators of the exhibition hope to shed light on the truth of Oct. 7 by getting to know people’s stories, whether through the audio of a phone call between now-freed hostage Romi Gonen and her mother, the portable toilets riddled with bullet holes or unidentified handbags left at the festival.
“I love that this exhibition is not about statistics or the general story,” Ben Haim added. “This is about personal stories, personal testimonies, personal items, and you learn about the people that we lost.”
The Nova Music Festival Exhibition is open daily from June 14 to July 6 in Washington, D.C. from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., except on Fridays.
