Toronto-born  26 year old Shye Klein Weinstein never even considered where Gaza was, when he went to what he expected would be a fun, relaxing, enjoyable festival, but then he began hearing incoming rocket fire. "We were in the middle of the dessert where there were no bomb shelters and no protected rooms", and "people were still partying" and were trying to decide if they should leave due to the rockets. 

Shye, had made aliyah to Israel last April (I went to Israel for a vacation and never left"). He decided to join his cousin and a group of friends at the Nova music festival, and with his camera strapped to his chest, was taking photographs of the young people he was meeting, photos he shared when speaking before a large crowd at the Asper Campus on March 11, in an event sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Wpg, Hillel, and the Asper Foundation.  Never in his wildest dreams did  Shye imagine he would bear witness to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack, resulting in the murder  of 364 festival goers,and saw 40 of them kidnapped, with many more being injured. Shye's photos provide a chilling first hand account of that day.

The photos of the festival before the attack are striking for their beauty-- a young couple kissing, people in front of tents in the campground, laughing and smiling.

But when the rockets didn't stop, Shye became very concerned. "That was my first inclination that something was up. (It was) Hundreds and hundreds of rockets really close, sirens going off (and) on the app on our phone. 

“As time went on, I heard gunfire off in a distance, really far away (and) not within the festival grounds. That just made my heart sink and I really thought to myself that something is up and I wasn’t really sure what until it happened.”

Shye and his group packed up, took water bottles and Shye decided he would drive, but "there was no road" and traffic was not movinh. He was trapped in "gridlock."

"I decided to drive past everyone...I went around cars in line," he noted.  As he zipped by, he noticed some of these cares were empty and bullet ridden. "I don't see movement in the cars."  To his East, Shye could see Hamas gunman on the road, and to his West, there was a bottleneck of traffic. "So I drive into this dusty field...We get out and run and we're being shot at…we are ducking down low to avoid being shot at." People were "running into the woods."

Shye sums up the scene. "It's chaos."

In addition to his photos, Shye also showed video clips he had taken that fateful day. He says, "It's freaking me out more and more as we see more and more bodies."  Hamas men are wearing masks, black t-shirts and vest, carrying weapons.  Shye thought they would be shot at but for some reason they were not. At 8:47 a.m. "we make it to the highway" on the way home to Tel-Aviv.

Shye notices black smoke in the sky, but it does not enter his mind that it is the smoke of people being burned in their homes in nearby kibbutzim.

As soon as he gets home, Shye develops his film, and then begins tracing what happened to the people captured in his photos.

While all of the friends he went to the festival survived, two people he met there were murdered and others he knew were kidnapped or killed.

“The camera lens doesn’t lie. Shye Klein's photos and videos of the Nova Festival tragedy provide a horrifying glimpse into the events of October 7,” said Jeff Lieberman, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg. “The world must know the full scope of the barbarity that was carried out by Hamas that day.”

From Oct. 9 until early November, Shye began giving media interviews every day to outlets such as ABC, NBC, CNN, “sometimes six times a day.” He has been speaking at universities and communities across North America.

Since he has a medical condition Shye is not in the IDF, but he wanted to do something to help, and his photos show the world what really happened the day of the Hamas massacre.

He speaks of those who have survived the rave, “as serving in the army or volunteering, taking care of family and friends, making sure no one is alone.”

“There’s a greater sense of togetherness than there was before.”