‘6:29’ — the moment the music stopped on Oct. 7

By Eliyahu Freedman

TEL AVIV — Daniel Ozeri found himself returning to the worst moments of his life on a recent Sunday — not inside his own mind, but inside a Tel Aviv convention center.

Ozeri was in Expo Tel Aviv, a sprawling complex in the city’s north where the Nova music festival, which ended when Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, was recreated in exacting detail.

At least 364 partygoers were murdered and 40 taken hostage at the festival on Kibbutz Re’im, which  became a powerful symbol of Israel’s loss. 

Ozeri, like so many others, spent hours running away with “bullets flying over your head,” losing his jewelry as he scrambled in a forested area near the festival site.

He said that visiting the exhibit was not easy, but felt essential.

“It really brings me back there and the horrific pain of that moment, but we have to return there to memorialize what happened and remember our friends who were killed there,” Ozeri said. 

It’s a somber experience that the organizers of the “6:29” exhibition — named for the moment the music stopped that morning as sirens of incoming rockets blared — hope is repeated often during its limited run.

“The whole idea of the memorial here is to actualize what was at the event and where it stopped,” said Sarel Botavia, 26, one of the festival producers who helped design the exhibit. 

“The exhibit expresses the distance between the love we are trying to express and the hatred and massacre that occurred there.”

The exhibit, which charges a donation of five shekels ($13.75) to enter, is a fundraiser for the Nova community’s continued healing expenses and long-term vision. 

It aims to ensure that Nova’s legacy is not only one of tragedy, but of rebirth and survival.

It comes amid both a wave of initiatives to support Nova survivors, including a therapeutic retreat in central Israel, as well as mounting concerns about whether they are getting all the help they desperately need.

Families from the festival community, who lack the geographic bonds of the kibbutzes attacked on Oct. 7, recently formed an association to argue that their needs were being neglected.

Initially, the government provided some financial and psychological assistance for survivors and victims of the Nova and Psyduck festivals, but much of the expenses since have relied on civilian support. 

The exhibit and other efforts focused on the Nova massacre aim to make true a slogan that has been adopted by the so-called “Tribe of Nova”: “We will dance again.”

That message recently got a powerful boost from survivors, including Mia Shem. The 26-year-old, who had been abducted from the site and injured, unveiled a tattoo of the slogan after being freed.

Whether walking through a detailed reenactment is helpful to survivors and others is up for debate.

For some, immersion in the sights and sounds of that day could trigger post-traumatic anxiety. But there is also evidence from research that exposure to the scene of trauma can be useful in post-traumatic counseling and recovery.

A psychiatrist who treated Nova survivors shortly after the tragedy says that each individual response to trauma is different and for some the exhibit can be healing. 

On the national level, the psychiatrist, who asked to remain anonymous, believes that there is immense power in the Nova community being empowered to take control of their narrative in such a public forum.

Nova festival producer Nimrod Arnin, who lost his sister in the Oct. 7 attack, said that they are “making efforts to explain to survivors the intensity of the experience and that there are some who are choosing not to attend the exhibit.”

Organizers discourage children from attending.

Visitors enter the darkly lit indoor hall and proceed into the “camping area,” with tents and other gear strewn across the floor and a game of backgammon in progress, as many fled the scene without time to assemble their belongings. 

Past the rows of tents lies the bathroom and parking area where the most gruesome evidence of the Hamas slaughter on site is found: a yellow portable toilet with 11 bullet holes and destroyed cars that were towed from the festival site are stacked on top of each other, burnt beyond recognition.

In the center of the reconstructed dance floor, shrouded by the colorful festival shade, a somber visual projection shows angels rising on loop, representing the young lives tragically taken. 

An area with personal belongings is both an exhibit and an actual lost-and-found.

“We brought the gear here for people to see and search for,” explained volunteer Yael Finkelstein.

Ozeri combed through the items but said he had little hope of finding his own lost things. Still, he said, he was taking away from the exhibit a small reminder of the “true freedom and happiness” that trance parties bring.

“We are not ready to dance again. It is not the appropriate time as we are still mourning all our friends and those who we don’t know where they are,” he said. 

“There are things much more important than dancing now, but the time will come when all the captives are returned and we will win by dancing. 

“And many people who have no relationship with trance festivals will join to commemorate our friends. If we don’t dance it will be as if we allowed them to defeat us.”