The rockets had already begun to rain down when a group of friends posed for one last selfie at the Nova Festival in Israel, unaware of the horror that was about to unfold.
Two of them, British-Israelis Aner Shapiro and Yoad Pe’er, did not survive the day, having fallen victim to brutal Hamas attacks on October 7.
Another, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was held hostage for 11 months in Gaza before being killed by terrorists as the Israeli army closed in on his hideout.
The friends’ photograph is revealed in a BBC documentary called Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again, which will be screened on September 26 and details the full story of what happened to the Nova festival-goers.
Directed by award-winning Israeli director Yariv Mozer, the film uses almost entirely footage taken by the Nova youth, as well as videos taken by the terrorists as they embarked on their murderous attack.
Mozer received exclusive permission to film documentary footage at the Nova site just 24 hours after the attacks.
Smiles of innocence: Aner Shapiro –third from left– and next to him, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, pose for a group photo at the Nova Festival. Aner died in the attacks while Hersh was kidnapped and later murdered
A Palestinian militant was arrested at the Nova music festival in the Negev desert in southern Israel last October.
The selfie was taken by a group that included Halely Ben Tzion, 21, who, like Goldberg-Polin, was from a religious family and had not told her parents she was going to the trance party when she snuck out of the house on Oct. 6.
She was friends with Mr. Shapiro, 22, an off-duty Israel Defense Forces soldier who was Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s best friend.
The film shows how, at first, no one was too worried when the missile attacks began. On stage was Noa Beer, a 29-year-old British-Israeli booking agent who had brought a DJ to the party from Hungary.
When the sun came out in the early hours of October 7, the party was in full swing. ‘The sun comes out and suddenly you see the people around you, suddenly you see their smiles and you see the dance floor moving.
“And then someone grabbed my hand and showed me the sky. It was full of rockets,” Beer says.
At first, many of the party-goers assumed it was fireworks. Ms. Beer ordered the DJ to stop his performance and grabbed a microphone to shout “Red alert.” The party ended and people began to leave.
But because they were accustomed to rocket attacks that usually ended as quickly as they began, many thought nothing of rushing.
Unbeknownst to festival-goers, Hamas terrorists had infiltrated Israel’s border at numerous locations and were heading towards them from several directions.
Ms. Ben Tzion, Mr. Goldberg-Polin and Mr. Shapiro went to the camp to collect their things.
“We are in our camp, hugging each other and laughing about the situation,” Ms. Ben Tzion recalled of the moment the photo was taken.
‘Aner, Hersh, all my friends who were there. We took a selfie, one last selfie. And then everyone went their separate ways.’
Mrs. Ben Tzion was in no hurry: “I went behind the central stage to get a beer. I thought that as soon as the rockets stopped, we would leave, get out of there. But suddenly a guy said to me, ‘psst. ’ I looked at the stage and saw four guys hiding. They said, ‘Listen, girl, get under the stage, there are terrorists here. ’”
And then he heard gunshots. He recalled: ‘We heard gunshots constantly, they were getting closer and closer. People were screaming, begging, and then, bang!, silence. The screaming got louder: ‘Terrorists! Run! Now! Everybody run!’
Survivors of the deadly Oct. 7 attack attend a memorial service on Sept. 1, a day after the bodies of six hostages were discovered in Gaza.
Discarded items and rubbish after Hamas attack on Nova festival
Ms. Beer, whose car was in the VIP area, was one of the first to leave, but the Hamas terrorists were still ahead of her.
“We were driving on Route 232 and the rockets exploded over our heads and then two cars in front of me suddenly braked,” he said.
‘At first it looked like an accident, so I opened the door to help and at that moment I heard the first bullet. They didn’t hit us by chance.
‘I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the car behind me had stopped. The driver and the guy next to him had been shot in the head. All the cars near us had been riddled with bullets and had gone off the road. People were trying to run out of the cars and there were terrorists shooting at them.’
Shapiro and Goldberg-Polin, along with Pe’er and his friend Adi Kaufman, were the last to arrive at a roadside shelter where other festival-goers were hiding. That’s when they heard the terrorists.
“Aner tried to calm everyone down as best he could,” recalls Eitan Halley, 28, one of the few survivors of the shelter.
He added: “I saw Aner pick up (a grenade) and throw it. And then they threw another one. And every time they threw a grenade, he would just grab it and throw it. I thought, ‘This guy is throwing live grenades.'”
Mr. Shapiro’s luck ran out with the eighth grenade. “There was a very big explosion,”
Mrs Halley said: “When I finally got up, I remember Aner was no longer standing, he was no longer with us.”
Ms Halley said that when Israeli soldiers entered the shelter to see if anyone was alive, “I realised I was sitting on a pile of dead bodies”.
