On Sunday, April 19, two synagogues in Frederick will come together to memorialize the Holocaust and hear from keynote speaker Eugene Bergman, a survivor who has been deaf since he was 7 years old but still managed to help the Polish resistance at age 12 and survive a POW camp in Germany.
The 2026 Holocaust Remembrance Day event in Frederick is made up of more than just one man’s story, however. Rabbi Peter Grumbacher of Congregation Kol Ami in Frederick is the son of a survivor himself, and said that sharing his father’s story — as he will do in April — is always deeply personal.
“He was able to get out of Dachau, and my father and mother went to the United States in January 1939 after being interned for six weeks. He went into the U.S. Army and he became a hero. He did some phenomenal stuff — he had all kinds of medals and certificates and merits,” Grumbacher said. “I’ve [told his story] all around the country, and what I realized is that every single person, every single survivor story, is different. His story is my history.”
Martin Erlichman is the chair of the Holocaust Committee at Beth Sholom Congregation in Frederick, and he said that the event will be special not just because of the breadth of stories that attendees will hear, but also because of the unique nature of the keynote. Bergman is hard to understand due to his disability, so his words will be shared in part by his daughter, who understands American Sign Language.
“We will have someone who will be asking questions, and his interpreter will give him the question, and then his daughter will say his answer for him after he tells her his response,” Erlichman said. “They decided if they didn’t tell his story, nobody else could, and so they started to do this.”
That idea is similar to one expressed by Grumbacher. He said that he tells his father’s story because it is necessary to illustrate that the number of murdered Jews — six million — is not an abstract concept: it’s a series of individuals.
“What I realized early on is that when you talk about six million, nobody knows what that number means. It’s such a large number. That’s why when I talk about my father’s experiences, it’s one person, and I think people are much more attuned to that,” he said.
While Frederick may not have as large of a Jewish community as places like Baltimore or Pikesville, it is important to remind people of what happened in Europe in the early 20th century. In fact, Grumbacher gave an example of what the ramifications of these efforts can be on a small, general non-Jewish community.
He spoke to students in Whitwell, Tennessee, a small community of mostly Christians. Whitwell students began a project to collect six million paper clips to better visualize the impact of the Holocaust, which spread to a community-wide appreciation of the Jewish struggle, complete with a Holocaust memorial.
“I went to the school, and I spoke to them,” he said. “I felt like I was bringing coals to Newcastle.”
Erlichman said that this increased understanding of the individual stories of the Holocaust can help spur action to prevent another genocide.
“The program in itself is to remember,” he said. “We want to take action. It’s sustained [action] against hatred, because with antisemitism, it never just stops there.”
He added the event is, in this vein, promoted to all communities in the Frederick community, not just Jewish ones.
“We try very hard to inform and invite people in the community, not just faith leaders and church leaders that are interested. We always invite city and state officials. We’ve been very lucky — the mayor of Frederick is supportive of our program, and he and our county executive will participate in it. They will have Holocaust remembrance proclamations that they will present to our congregations.”
While two synagogues holding a Holocaust remembrance event in a small and largely Christian community may not sound as important as Yom HaShoah services in Israel, New York City or Baltimore, it’s just as essential. Frederick Jews are standing up and standing together as a community to remind people of a simple message: never again.
“Nowadays especially, with the antisemitism and Holocaust denial, if I don’t tell [this story] who the heck is going to?” Grumbacher said. “Every generation is getting older and older, and one day someone’s going to say, ‘Nothing happened there.’ So I have to do my share right now.”
