Scarlett Bolt

Jupiter High School Students visited the Nova Exhibition on Feb. 13 in North Miami. Students from AP Psychology, US History Honors and the No Place for Hate club attended the exhibition.

The Nova Music festival is an annual celebration of music. The festival features an array of electronic, alternative, pop and indie music. The festival usually happens all night and concludes at sunrise. For its 2023 edition of the festival, it was held in Re’im Israel.

At 6:29 a.m., during the anticipated sunrise portion of the festival, Hamas terrorist missiles and rockets were fired over the crowd. They attacked Israel from land, air and sea. 

The attacks on Oct. 7 claimed the lives of 1,200 some civilians, 251 hostages and initiated the war in Gaza. 370 of those lives and 44 of those hostages were from the Nova Music festival. This was considered the bloodiest day in Jewish history since the last day of the Holocaust, according to the U.S. Department of  Defense.

The exhibition featured all real artifacts from the event including burned cars, bathroom stalls, phones, clothes and portions of the festival left behind. Phones and TV screens throughout the exhibit displayed videos and audio messages of those who were recording themselves during the attack and the actual bombing itself.

“It was such a meaningful experience,” Casey Litchtig, junior, said. “I think that everyone should go.”

At the Nova exhibition, students got the opportunity to hear from survivors. In the “Healing Room”, survivor Roey Dery spoke about his personal firsthand experience with the Nova Music Festival attack. Dery was only 25 years old and lost some of his friends in the attack. 

“I went to a party with 10 of my friends and only seven of us came out,” Dery said. 

Dery showed videos he took of people running in fields with gunshots, sounds of rockets and his friends’ saying their last words.

“It was really sad, I didn’t really expect all of the real things from the Nova exhibit to be there,” Raoul Harris, junior, said. 

Drey was not the only one who lost friends that day. 

Following the brutalities on Oct. 7, Nova formed The Tribe of Nova Foundation after the massacre to provide support and community for families and survivor attendees. 

The Nova Foundation provides therapy, financial aid, rehabilitation, medical treatment, commemorative events, social integration and suicide prevention work through their foundation. Nova made a Paramount documentary movie in 2024 titled “We Will Dance Again” following the Oct. 7 event. Nova is striving to bring awareness to antisemitism in hopes of celebrating diversity of life and preventing future attacks.

Through the Nova exhibition, students are given the opportunity to see the facts and have the experience of being at the festival. 

“Just seeing how horrible Oct 7 was, for the people who survived through it, I think what is really important and what I got out of the exhibition was that it is important to understand what other people are going through no matter what those struggles are,” Litchtig said.