Telling victims’ stories, artist turns Nova’s killing fields into a healing memorial

A remote parking lot near Kibbutz Re’im on the Gaza border in southern Israel would normally be an unlikely destination for some 7,000 Israeli and overseas visitors a day.

But as the scene of the most extensive slaughter carried out by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, and one of the few sites related to that day that are open to the public, it has become a magnet for pilgrimage and the most visited location in Israel.

This is where thousands of people, mainly young adults, gathered for the Supernova music festival to welcome the dawn on that fateful Saturday morning.

What was meant to be a celebration quickly turned into a nightmare as Hamas terrorists invaded, under a rain of missiles, spraying revelers with gunfire and raping many before murdering them.

Photos and video show panicked crowds running for their lives, cars riddled with bullets, and a road strewn with dead bodies.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, 344 civilians who attended the Nova party and 34 security personnel were killed amid the attack, which, according to testimonies, included sexual crimes and other brutal acts. The terrorists abducted another 44 to the Gaza Strip, several of whom were killed in captivity. Others were killed after seeking shelter elsewhere.

Even before knowing the fate of their loved ones, shattered families began erecting makeshift memorials on the site soon after the massacre.

Now, thanks to the volunteer efforts of Tel Aviv-based artist Amir Chodorov and support from the bereaved families and the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael – Jewish National Fund, the ad hoc memorial is being transformed into a moving and dignified tribute to the victims, so many of whom represented Israel’s best, Chodorov told The Times of Israel.

Chodorov, 68, spent 25 years in the Israel Air Force, finishing as a colonel overseeing all the IAF’s operational units.

After a stint in business, he decided to follow a lifelong fascination with photography and Michelangelo’s frescoes, studying in Rome and developing a signature style of large creations that use Renaissance principles.

His life-changing pivot to memorializing the Nova festival victims came on December 31, 2023, when a chance meeting in Tel Aviv with Sigalit Shemer, whose son Ron was murdered there,  prompted him to volunteer to create a collage with the faces of all of the fallen, a number he puts at 420 and growing.

The collage, erected on what was the festival dance floor, was completed in early 2024, on the same day the KKL-JNF planted a memorial forest with one tree for each victim. Chodorov is designing plaques to be placed beside each sapling.

Meeting the families and hearing their stories pushed Chodorov to get fully involved. He designed a plan for a large memorial site and has since completed 1,300 works out of roughly 4,000 planned. These range from plaques for each victim to installations that explain what happened at particular points along a memorial trail.

Chodorov said that the number 420 is still subject to change. Days ago, he learned that a soldier, Avi Hovalashvilli, had died fighting on the site. As more information comes to light, he expects to add more names.

Throughout, he has worked closely with the families, particularly with Meir Zohar, whose daughter Bar Zohar, 23, was shot dead while fleeing the party, and with Yaniv Maimon, who manages the southern region for the KKL-JNF, which owns the 240-dunam (60-acre) plot.

Key to the project was the KKL-JNF’s decision to declare the parcel an official memorial site. It is paying for the infrastructure, memorial grove, plaques and a maintenance team.

Chodorov has spent NIS 1.7 million ($460,000) of his own money on the project. Relatives of the victims have raised NIS 1.1 million ($297,000) so far to reimburse him for raw materials and pay those who work for him.

“Even if I invest half a million, it’s the best deal of my life,” he said.

As yet, there is no state memorial for the victims of October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists slaughtered some 1,200 people in southern Israel and kidnapped 251 to the Gaza Strip.

“That KKL decided to take responsibility and ownership of the story was huge. It’s good for the parents to know that a responsible body has taken charge. They are incredible people,” Chodorov said.

Chodorov submits each project for KKL-JNF approval.

He then “drills” into each person’s story, “as if they were my children.”

He has watched some 5,000 video clips and has lost count of the number of photographs he’s viewed.

He said he was particularly moved to discover that over 30 young people were shot dead after staying to help others.

Today, the site is strewn with pictures of the victims attached to poles, some festooned with ad hoc art, and others with only the victims’ names and ages.

Chodorov is gradually replacing the makeshift signs with standardized plaques printed on both sides telling the victims’ stories in Hebrew and English.

Visitors to the site follow a memorial trail past the spot where a police command and control booth stood and another where an ambulance was hit by an RPG, killing 18 partygoers hiding inside. The trail continues toward a yellow dumpster, one of two on October 7, where people hid under garbage before being found and slaughtered, and passes by a beverage stand, dubbed the “small bar,” where 19 people lost their lives.

A “main stage” memorial is also under construction. Chodorov hopes it will serve as a focal point for memorial ceremonies. Artist Sara’le Lior, whose late son Matan provided the festival’s amplification, electrical infrastructure, and lighting, is creating art for the structure, which will commemorate all the DJs and event staff who were murdered there.

At the site of the police control booth, Chodorov has built a metal structure onto which he is gradually installing plaques with the stories of the 20 police officers who were killed at the site and the nearby Re’im Junction.

“Only four of them had combat jobs,” he said. “Yet they all sacrificed themselves to protect young people they didn’t even know, operating with the highest values.”

While all the stories are heart-wrenching, he found those about the ambulance and dumpster particularly shocking.

“The terrorists shot an RPG at the ambulance and 18 people sheltering inside were burned alive. Nothing was left of them,” Chodorov said. “After the massacre, body parts were collected quickly for burial. When video clips revealed that unaccounted-for individuals were also in the ambulance, they dug up the graves and found tissue remnants of others.”

Chodorov was alerted to the dumpster story by Yoram Yehudai, whose son Ron Yehudai was murdered there. Fourteen people spent over five hours hiding under the trash before being slaughtered.

Chodorov bought one of the dumpsters from the owner and resolved to bring the dead back to life by letting them tell their stories through transcripts of terrified WhatsApp messages they sent to family and friends while hiding. The messages abruptly end at 11:47 a.m. as the gunmen closed in.

“They begged for their lives and nobody came to save them,” Chodorov said. “I felt I was telling the story of all the people alone in their protected rooms along the Gaza border.”

Those who were killed fleeing outside of the compound are memorialized — sometimes in groups — on large plaques in a section of mature woodland, where many of the revelers camped.

Helping him with the metal frames and other heavy work are two bereaved men, Yochai Rivlin, whose two brothers, Gideon “Gigi” Rivlin, 18, and Staff Sgt. Aviad Rivlin, 23, were killed, and Jojo Rabia, who lost two sons, Yuval Rabia, 33, and Noam Rabia, 30. Yuval’s fiancee Noy Zafraani, 27, was also murdered.

The memorial project has “turned and torn my life in all directions,” Chodorov said. He sometimes thinks about how his two grown sons, one of whom is a career soldier, could have been in the collage as well.

But Chodorov’s distress is nothing compared to the bereaved whose pain he hopes the memorial will help soothe.

“There are parents who haven’t visited the site yet, mothers who haven’t managed to get out of bed,” the artist said.

“Helpless psychiatrists have turned to me and asked if I can visit people and tell them about the memorial in the hope it might stop them from ending their lives,” he went on. “You can’t cope with an event like this. I get sent horrific video clips. I don’t sleep the same, I’m wrecked. I never dreamed the project would reach such proportions, but now, with so many visitors, I have a responsibility.”

“What helps me is to think about what happened to the families due to the commemoration. At the beginning, nobody wanted to look at the Nova party. Now, their loved ones are in the most visited site in the country,” he said.

Karine Journo was one of the young people killed in the ambulance. She had gone to the festival with a broken leg in a boot, which hampered any escape. Hers was the first plaque that Chodorov put up.

“The whole site developed from that plaque,” said Karine’s mother, Inbal. “I would go there at least twice weekly to tell Karine’s story. I told Amir I wanted people to hear her story even when I wasn’t there.”

Chodorov also erected the collage and a large picture of Karine in the Journos’ yard in central Mazkeret Batya, which backs onto a main road. This is one of dozens of memorials he has created for Nova families throughout Israel.

“Karine went to the party with a broken leg and she was burned in the ambulance,” Journo related. “All that was left were three teeth. That’s what we buried.”

“I always call Amir my torch. In all the darkness, he was the light that lit up my way,” she said.

Chodorov travels to the Re’im site four times a week, spending the rest of his time in his Ramat Gan studio.

On the days he is onsite, he arrives at 6 a.m. When the buses arrive, he follows four or five groups around to listen and learn from their comments.

He conducts site tours, voluntarily, for anyone who asks, and has briefed tour guides after families complained many were ill-informed.

He estimates he’ll need another year’s work at the site. Discussions are being held on bringing in seven bomb shelters from the main road nearby, Route 232, also known as the “road of death,” and using them to tell the stories of the young people murdered inside while fleeing the massacre.

Those who perished at the party were people with “values, excellence, prizewinners, fighters,” he said. “They were the best of the best.”