Nova survivor Natalie Sanandaji looks at items collected from the Nova festival at “The Nova Music Festival Exhibition: October 7th 06:29 AM, The Moment Music Stood Still” on April 18, 2024 in New York City. Photo: Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

A new exhibition in New York City that features items and firsthand videos from the Hamas terrorist attack at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7 is not meant to be political and sets out to ensure that the massacre is remembered, according to organizers of the project.

“I think the events of Nova are not only being forgotten — they’re being ignored,” Jewish record executive and entrepreneur Scooter Braun, who helped bring the exhibit to New York after its 10-week run in Tel Aviv, told CBS’s Sunday Morning. He added that the exhibit has nothing to do with politics and is instead “about music.”

“Why are musicians not screaming from the top of their lungs that music should be a safe place?” he asked. “Just stop for a minute and ask yourself, on either side, do kids dancing deserve to die? And the answer is no. So just give [the exhibit] an opportunity and have empathy in your heart for all sides.”

The exhibit, titled “Nova: Oct. 7 6:29 AM, The Moment Music Stood Still,” takes a venue over 50,000 square feet near the 9/11 Memorial in downtown Manhattan and attempts to recreate the scene of the deadly terrorist attack at the music festival.

Artifacts salvaged from the site of the Hamas massacre are featured in the exhibit, including bullet-riddled bathroom stalls, scorched cars, signage, attendee tents, and personal belongings left behind such as shoes, clothes, and hats. The exhibition has a “healing tent” filled with artwork, and other works made by Nova Festival goers and survivors, and visitors can participate in a painted rock installation. The exhibit also highlights testimonies from survivors of the terrorist attack and a photo gallery of those murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7. Donations from the exhibition go to the Nova Healing Journey, an initiative that supports mental health treatment for victims and families of the Oct. 7 attacks. Over 360 festival-goers were killed by Hamas that day at the Nova Music Festival in Re’im, Israel, and more than 40 others, including American citizens, were taken as hostages back to the Gaza Strip.

Braun told Sunday Morning he wanted to help bring the exhibit to New York City because he was outraged by the silence surrounding the Nova massacre. He said the international community has condemned concert massacres in the past — including the 2017 attack at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas and the bombing outside an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, that same year.

“Yet, the Nova festival had over 360 people killed, over 40 taken hostage. It’s the biggest massacre at a music festival in history and no one was saying anything,” Braun noted. “I just felt like I needed to do something.”

Nova survivor Daniel Dvir, 23 — who hid from Hamas terrorists in a tree, on a farm,and in a riverbed — also spoke to Sunday Morning, as did Hannie Ricardo, the mother of 26-year-old Nova victim Oriya Lipman Ricardo. Hannie talked about her daughter and other victims of the attacks saying, “They were radiant people, happy people. And they were butchered, massacred, raped, mutilated by monsters.”

“It was a wakeup call for the Jewish people,” she added. “We had to go to Gaza, to take care that we won’t be massacred again.” When asked about the Gazans affected by the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas terrorists controlling the Palestinian enclave, she said, “I don’t appreciate any loss of life, but if a terrorist hides behind them, what can we do?”

“Nova: Oct. 7 6:29 AM, The Moment Music Stood Still” is located at 35 Wall Street in New York City and is open April 21-May 25.

Update: The exhibition has been extended until June 16.