Fair | October 7th, 06:29AM: An Immersive Exhibition on Nova Music Festival Massacre

To celebrate the end of his two years of service as a medic in the Israel Defense Forces' paratrooper division, Tomer Meir joined 13 of his friends at the Nova Musica Festival on the weekend of October 6 in Re'im in southern Israel. It was his first ever music festival. "It was the best moments of my life. I can't explain the state we were in," the 21-year-old told the New York Jewish Week. "It was pure love -- people dancing, laughing, smiling. All the good stuff that we're living for." Until 6:29 a.m. on Saturday morning. The red alerts, the rockets and the running. "The music stopped. The rockets started. We started running for our lives," Meir said. Meir is a survivor of the Nova Music Festival Massacre, where Hamas militants killed 364 festival-goers and took at least 40 hotstages on the morning of Oct. 7. Six months after the attack, Meir is in New York sharing his story as part of an interactive exhibit about that day, which he says is helping him heal.

The Nova Musical Festival exhibition, titled October 7th, 06:29AM, is an immersive step into what it was like to be at the festival when it was attacked. Screens show clips from the attack on Nova are displayed next to personal and camping items taken from the festival recreating the festival layout. The exhibit, which debuted in Tel Aviv for 10 weeks in December, was created by Israeli designers and cultural producers, many of whom were producers with the Nova Music Festival itself. It was brought to New York with the help of Scooter Braun, the Jewish-American music producer and philanthropist.

The exhibit recreates the visuals and sounds of the Nova Music Festival massacre. But the New York version is in some ways "more intense," according to Yael Finkelstein, a volunteer who collected items from the Nova site and helped set up both the Tel Aviv and New York exhibit. New elements at the New York exhibit include dozens of video testimonies from survivors, Zaka volunteers and family members, as well as graphic raw footage taken on Oct. 7 from both festival-goers and Hamas militants. In addition, survivors of the massacre such as Meir and Sassi will be at the exhibit every day to share their stories and answer questions.

Their goal, Meir said, is to show New Yorkers that the horror they experienced could happen to anyone.