Down an alley past police barricades, visitors throng to London’s unsettling Nova exhibition |
LONDON — Down an alleyway behind a small pub in the hipster enclave of Shoreditch, visitors in the know will find the Nova Exhibition, which opened to the public Wednesday in London.
The homage to the 364 people murdered at the Nova festival — who were among some 1,200 people in southern Israel slaughtered by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023, in addition to 251 taken hostage that day — is understated by design, with little to announce it from the street. No signs point the way to the display, and curious passersby may wonder about the large traffic blockades and unusually high number of police officers patrolling the area.
Shoreditch is part of the London borough of Hackney, which has just elected a mayor from the Green Party — known for putting anti-Israel activism front and center in its campaigning. And the exhibition’s opening comes days after the city was brought to a virtual standstill by two opposing demonstrations, neither one a welcome sight for the Jewish community: a pro-Palestinian march to commemorate Nakba Day, and a far-right rally led by anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson.
That, along with a recent wave of antisemitic and anti-Israel activity in Britain — including beatings, stabbings, arson and deadly terror attacks, against a backdrop of increasingly visible hate speech and vandalism — might have given potential visitors pause. But turnout is already high, say organizers.
Hundreds of people passed through the heavily secured doors on the first day, while thousands more tickets have been sold for the six-week run.
Among the first inside was Suzanne Bond, who came with her husband from Essex.
“I’ve seen so many documentaries on it — but out there [at the exhibition], you just feel like you’re there,” Bond said through tears. “I can’t imagine what they went through that day. It’s very distressing, but I had to come.”
“Watching [the documentary on the massacre] ‘We Will Dance Again,’ you see them all dancing and then all of a sudden the evil just comes through. I know people support the other side, but I don’t know how they can,” said Bond, who was wearing a badge bearing an intertwined Union Jack and Star of David.
The exhibition itself is a recreation of the chaos and carnage wreaked on the Nova festival, complete with burnt out skeletons of vehicles, empty tents, upturned portable toilets and countless shoes, clothes and other personal effects discarded by those who fled.
It features audio capturing the horrors — the piercing sounds of rocket fire, continual honking of car horns, distant screams of suffering, and cries of “allahu akbar” by the marauding terrorists — all while extensive footage and recordings from that day play out on TV screens and mobile phones.
The experience is guaranteed to turn your stomach and leave you with a dull, grinding headache. Yet Lisa Marlowe is........