The Memorial in the Woods is based on large commemorative signs that have been placed in the accommodation area of the Nova Festival. The complex is dedicated to the memory of those who managed to escape from the Re’im parking lot at the beginning of the October 7, 2023 attack, but were later murdered – on the roads, in the shelters and in the open areas.

The site was planned and built by the artist Amir Chodorov, the initiator and director of the overall memorial site, together with his partners in creating the displays at the site, Jojo Rabia and Yohai Rivlin. The story of the site is told below, from Amir’s personal point of view.

When I began to set up the memorial site, it was clear to me that even those who escaped from the parking lot and were murdered outside its boundaries should be given a place within the memorial. While some of the displays at the site are currently located in the same place where the commemorated events themselves took place on October 7, for many of the murdered men and women there was not a single clear location to which the commemoration could be connected.

I found the right place for their memorial in the woods. At the time of the party, the area was used for the party-attendees to sleep, and the tents in which they slept the night before the attack were spread out among the trees there. The choice to commemorate these people in this location returns their stories back to the place where they had been together, in the last hours before everything changed.