On October 14th, Josh Opperer connected us with the Paul E. Singer Foundation about an opportunity for Detroit to host a pop-up of the Nova Festival Exhibition. We partnered with The J, and—in less than a month—opened the doors.
The exhibit’s vision was to guide you through the journey of a Nova festival participant, beginning with a short video that highlighted the beauty of the event. The movie told the story of the festival with many clips from before 6:29AM enjoying music and the wonders of Israel.
The video concludes, and as you move beyond the curtain, you are confronted with the devastation that occurred after 6:30 am.
The self-guided tour began in the campgrounds, where belongings left behind were on display.
Videos show people hiding or fleeing from terrorists, phone calls to family members saying goodbye, and a terrorist boasting about killing 10 Jews. In all the GoPro videos taken from the bodies of Hamas Terrorists they never use the word “Israeli,” they only use the word “Yahud” (which means Jew).
After walking through the campgrounds, the tour continued through the festival’s bar area, where actual bottles, signs, and large coolers from the event were on display. A video played showing a mother of a young boy, who had hidden in one of the coolers for seven hours.
On the other side of the bar, portable toilets were displayed, marked with bullet holes.
Continuing through the exhibit, two cars were displayed, their frames burned, with bumper stickers added in tribute to the victims. Horrific images and stories of Route 232 played in the background.
We wanted our Jewish community to bear witness to one of the deadliest days in our history, but even more so we wanted our non-Jewish community to see what happened with their own eyes.
We welcomed many delegations including Hindu, Chaldean, Christian and Seikh community leaders, local city and municipal elected officials, State Senators & Representatives, leaders in education, U.S. Senators and Representatives and various law enforcement groups, including the FBI.
The final section of the exhibit is dedicated to those who lost their lives and those still held hostage. Attendees were encouraged to write notes of support to the families of the victims, and all notes will be delivered to Israel.
We were honored to host the first ever pop-up of this exhibition. We are grateful to our partners at The J, our generous sponsors, all of the staff and community members who volunteered their time to help with the event, and to all of the people who came out to bear witness to the atrocities of October 7th.