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A memorial to the victims of the massacre at the Nova music festival has opened in Southern California. Nova was the huge dance party near Gaza that Hamas militants attacked in the early hours of October 7. They killed hundreds of people and took scores of hostages. NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose accompanied some synagogues visiting the exhibit and has this report.
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JASON DEROSE, BYLINE: The memorial is called "October 7, 6:29 a.m. - The Moment The Music Stood Still." Organizer Ilan Faktor points to dozens of video monitors.
ILAN FAKTOR: Some of the footage there is taken by Hamas themself while attacking, and some of it is by the kids, hiding, calling home and trying to escape.
DEROSE: The giant warehouse in Culver City is now home to burned-out cars, abandoned tents, empty lawn chairs.
FAKTOR: Everything is authentic - everything that you see. So the porta potties we brought over with us. In this movie, you can see the Hamas terrorists walking porta potty by porta potty, shooting in them all.
DEROSE: This memorial originally opened in Tel Aviv late last year and moved to New York this spring. One of the Nova survivors and another creator is Yotam Ben Khalifa. Hamas killed 48 of his friends that day.
YOTAM BEN KHALIFA: Before October 7, if I lose one friend on a car accident or something, my whole world was, like, upside-down. And today, after October 7, when you lose this amount of people - you know, I don't know how to really face this thing.
DEROSE: But he's trying to respond with hope and resilience.
KHALIFA: One of the things is to make big memorials and to remember these people that only came for a festival and murdered - even not a little bit of humanity.
DEROSE: Dozens of synagogues are touring the exhibit here in Southern California through early October. Among them is Stephen Wise Temple. Seventeen-year-old Eliana Svilik is a member. She found victim cellphone video most moving.
ELIANA SVILIK: The recordings of the kids calling their parents 'cause that's what I would have done.
DEROSE: For her, the memorial is a way to acknowledge the victims' humanity.
E SVILIK: You know, regardless of your politics, you need to have empathy for other human beings. And the people at the Nova festival - they were just human beings trying to have a good time.
DEROSE: Eliana's mother, Mariya Svilik, wept throughout the tour - not just for what happened that day, but the reaction since.
MARIYA SVILIK: (Crying) Outside of Jews, the world doesn't care. The second you bring up the festival, people talk about - what about these other people? No one wants to talk about the festival.
YOSHI ZWEIBACK: The forgetting began almost immediately after October 7.
DEROSE: Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is bringing multiple groups to the exhibit. He's disappointed the world's attention now is so focused on the deaths in Gaza.
ZWEIBACK: Almost immediately after October 7, the finger was pointed at Israel as if somehow it was responsible for an act of horrific terror, and we have to reject that wholeheartedly.
DEROSE: The lost and found, similar to Holocaust memorials, is especially poignant. Shoes and backpacks fill tables alongside piles of keys and eyeglasses.
JEFFREY WACHS: One of them was a pair of goggles. And I remember picking it up, and I'm like, I had goggles just like this from many years ago.
DEROSE: Jeffrey and Hannah Wachs came to the memorial with 75 members of their synagogue, Valley Beth Shalom in Encino.
HANNAH WACHS: Actually seeing physical evidence of real, specific people who dropped their contact lens case, who brought a silly pillow with them - and you think, someone picked out that pillow and decided to bring it to a music festival. This is a very specific, real person.
DEROSE: A person to honor by remembering them, says Valley Beth Shalom Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz.
NOLAN LEBOVITZ: To help bear witness and learn the lesson that we've learned as Jews and as human beings - that we need to stand united against this kind of evil so that our kids can grow up in a world where they can trust in humanity.
DEROSE: And live, says Rabbi Lebovitz, rather than fear death. Jason DeRose, NPR News, Culver City.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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