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Release of Israeli hostages celebrated at Oct. 7 exhibit in Boston
"We had [the hostage returns] on all the screens here and we were just waiting to see the hugs with the families and the partners and everything."
Nova Exhibition:
At an exhibition in Boston memorializing the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, visitors and survivors celebrated the release of 20 of Hamas’s hostages on Monday.
The Nova Exhibition is a traveling display of artifacts from the Nova Music Festival that was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7. It’s currently in Boston, has visited Berlin, and soon will be in Chicago.
One of the survivors of the attack, Noa Beer, recalled the feeling of excitement throughout the exhibit space this week.
When the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced on Friday, “it was a sigh of relief,” but the relief came with confusion because “we’ve always been saying, we can’t start healing until they come home” — and now they have, Beer said.
At the exhibit on Monday, “I could really feel the excitement,” Beer continued. “We had [the hostage returns] on all the screens here and we were just waiting to see the hugs with the families and the partners and everything.”
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Rabbi Marc Baker, who is also the CEO of Combined Jewish Philanthropies, said at the exhibition’s press conference on Monday, “We weren’t sure whether this day would ever come.”
“Here in Greater Boston, in Israel, and across our entire global Jewish family it’s hard to put into words the gratitude and joy that we feel that our hostages are finally home where they belong,” he said.
Their return “just made the purpose of this exhibit so much stronger,” Beer said.
“As a community, we want to be there for [the returned hostages], but we don’t know what they went through … you can’t know in what state a person is coming back,” Beer said. “It sometimes feels like the whole world will just continue from this moment and move forward, but we are not moving forward yet.”
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Although 20 hostages were returned to their homes, the remains of an additional 19 hostages have not been returned to the families of the victims, according to BBC.
The families of the hostages, living or dead, cannot begin to grieve until their loved ones are home, Beer said.
“We will continue fighting until each and every one of them is home,” Beer added.
While Beer and her peers felt mostly excitement, the return of the hostages “came at a very difficult time.” Two days before the hostages were released, another Nova survivor and Beer’s friend, Roei Shalev, ended his own life, she explained.
“His soul was just not able to take it,” Beer said.
