Holocaust Remembrance Day Event

Join us as we honor and remember all of the people that perished during the Holocaust and other genocides. There will be a candle lighting ceremony, and guest speaker, Mark Frydenberg, will present on his father and Holocaust survivor, Bernie Frydenberg.

Mark Frydenberg lives in Waltham, MA where he teaches information technology at Bentley University, and is the director of the Computer Information Systems Sandbox, a technology-enabled student learning space. He is also a member and past president of Temple Beth Israel in Waltham, MA.  Next week, Mark will travel to London for the 80th annual reunion of "The Boys," a group of orphaned child Holocaust survivors, and their families. His father, Bernie, was among those children brought to the Calgarth Estate near Lake Windermere in the north of England in 1945 to recover and rebuild their lives.

Bernie Frydenberg was a Holocaust survivor who went on to live a remarkable life. He was born in Demblin, Poland in 1925 (or 1928, depending on which documents you look at), He was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp, and later was liberated from Theresienstadt.  There he was miraculously reunited with his brother Leo. He was among the group of children brought to Windermere, England to recover.  He went on to serve in the Israeli Army in the War of Independence in 1948 and then returned to England for a short while.  He later moved to Canada with his brother, and there he met Phyllis, who happened to be visiting her aunt in Montreal.  He moved to Meriden, where he worked as a woodworker, and was the sole proprietor of Reliable Cabinet and Woodworking Shop on Pratt Street for more than 30 years. He was an active member of Temple B'nai Abraham, and swam several times a week at the YMCA well into his 90's.  In his later years, he shared his experiences to educate students and community groups about the Holocaust, including a talk he gave here at the Meriden Public Library in 2017. He died in June, 2020.