An empty bar, an untouched lost-and-found, burnt cars, bullet hole-ridden porta potties and posters of kidnapped children — all intentionally placed inside a 50,000-square-foot Culver City warehouse under eerie, neon lighting.
The Nova Festival Exhibition is an in-depth memorial to the more than 1,200 victims of the terrorist attack carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7 at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel’s Negev Desert.
More than 200 USC students and faculty attended the exhibit on Tuesday evening, sponsored by USC Chabad Jewish student center and USC Tikvah, a new club for Zionist students.
“Empathy for innocent people should extend to all innocent people,” said Scooter Braun, one of the exhibit’s partners in an interview with Annenberg Media. “Especially when those kids [killed at the Nova Festival] are just like the kids at USC.”
Mostly known as a music mogul, Braun explained that the Nova Festival is no different than Stagecoach, Coachella and Burning Man.
Braun partnered with the exhibit and brought it to the United States this year after it premiered in Tel Aviv for 10 weeks. The exhibit first spent two months in New York and then came to Los Angeles in late August. He hopes to bring it to other cities in the future.
“People should have enough empathy to come see this [exhibit], and care about these kids, representing over 20 countries and every religion, as much as they have empathy for a kid in Palestine,” said Braun, who is the grandchild of Holocaust concentration camp survivors.
When USC students walked through the exhibit doors, their chatter quickly faded as the sound of screams and sirens filled the air. Remnants from the festival’s campgrounds lay scattered on the sandy ground — abandoned tents, a red and black Nike sneaker, baby wipes and a bottle of Coca-Cola. These were actual items collected from the site of the attack.
Screens scattered around the walls played selfie videos of victims who documented the attack. Many of the attendees were hiding in the bushes, saying their final goodbyes to their families.
“It all felt very real,” said Naya Pollack after seeing the exhibition. A junior studying economics and business finance, Pollack’s close family member survived the Nova Festival. “This was a really amazing experience that not only Jewish people should go through.”
Following the campgrounds display, the exhibit expanded to a room that depicted the festival’s music. USC students stood under the same large, colorful canopy where the nearly 3,000 party-goers danced to trance music on that day. Additional screens displayed in-depth witness testimony of survivors, sharing their interactions with Hamas.
There was also footage taken by Hamas.
Elia Groode, a senior studying law, history and culture, reflected on a recording of a Hamas member calling his father from an Israeli’s phone. “All he wanted to do was share with his father how many people he killed,” she said.
Groode, who is also USC Tikvah’s director of education, visited a memorial at the site of the Nova Festival in Israel this summer. She said the Los Angeles exhibit was almost more powerful and different because “you felt like you were there at the time of the Nova Festival.”
The installation also features a candle-lit room memorializing the nearly 400 Israelis killed at the festival. A slow, instrumental version of the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah—which translates to “The Hope” — filled the room as teary-eyed students read the brief biographies beneath each victim’s smiling headshot.
“These people are human beings, some of them are around our age,” Groode said. “Understanding how they felt is so important.”
“I wanted to come see other people’s stories,” third-year law student Allen Nobel said. The son of Nobel’s cousin was at the festival, and was shot in the arm while witnessing close friends being murdered by Hamas.
The evening concluded in a brightly lit commemoration room, where students listened to stories from two Nova Festival survivors and from Scooter Braun. They then shared hugs and reflected over falafel and mango nectar.
“Powerful, overwhelming, challenging,” are three words the USC Office of Religious and Spiritual Life’s former interfaith director Jessica Spence Moss said when asked to reflect on the exhibit a day after attending.
“I think it’s important for all students to see it,” said Moss, who is currently the Assistant Director of Interfaith programs at California State University, Long Beach.
Students have another opportunity to view the exhibit this Sunday as part of a group sponsored by USC Hillel. They can also visit independently until the exhibit closes on Oct. 8.