Hans Wolfgang Glaser was born in Berlin on November 25, 1921. His father was Hugo Glaser, his mother Rosa Glaser, née Feldmann.
Rosa and Hugo had married in Mannheim in May 1920 and moved to Berlin to Turmstraße 73 in Tiergarten immediately after the wedding. There Hans Wolfgang was born and four years later his brother Ludwig.
For 12 years the Glasers lived in Turmstraße, then in March 1932 they moved to the quieter Elberfelder Straße 29, 2nd floor.
Hans Wolfgang's father Hugo Glaser had studied pharmacy at the Braunschweig Technical University and received his license to practice pharmacy in 1911. In the 1930s, he was employed at the Zions Pharmacy at Anklamer Strasse 39. The pharmacy together with a drugstore in the neighboring building belonged to the Jewish pharmacist Isbert Semmel.
With Hitler's seizure of power and the call to boycott Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933, the decline also began for the Jewish pharmacists in Berlin. On January 31, 1939, Jewish pharmacists had their licenses revoked, meaning they were no longer allowed to practice their profession.
Only a few months earlier, Hugo Glaser was arrested, presumably as a result of the November pogroms of 1938, and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. His brother-in-law Friedrich Feldmann recalled after the war that Hugo "was able to work as a pharmacist in a laboratory for the camp administration." He was released from the concentration camp again on December 14, 1938.
Hans Wolfgang Glaser's parents were wealthy, as evidenced by the documents of the restitution application of Friedrich Feldmann, the brother of Hans Wolfgang's mother, who tried for more than 15 years in the 1950s and 1960s to obtain compensation from the West German state for Rosa Glaser's property looted by the Nazis. How the family got by since Hugo's arrest in late 1938 and the ban on Jewish pharmacists in January 1939 is unclear; their property may have helped them for a time.
Unfortunately, we know very little about Hans Wolfgang. What school did he go to? What degree did he graduate from? Was he a member of a youth group, e.g., sports or the Aliyah, an international Jewish organization that sought to bring Jewish children and youth to Palestine for safety? Had he started a vocational training? Unfortunately, these and other questions must remain unanswered. We can assume, however, that as the son of wealthy Jewish parents, he received a careful education, was allowed to celebrate his bar mitzvah, and participated in the usual activities of young people in his circles while they were still possible.
In the summer of 1939, shortly before the beginning of World War II, Hans Wolfgang's aunt Lina Wolf and her daughter Ingeborg moved in with the Glaser family at Elberfelder Straße 29. Here they lived together until the Glaser family was deported and Lina and Ingeborg had to move to Schöneberg to Elßholzstraße 17.
Hans Wolfgang was deported with his parents and his brother Ludwig on November 17, 1941, along with 1002 other Jewish people from Grunewald station to Kowno in Lithuania. Eight days later, on November 25, 1941, Hans Wolfgang, 20 years old, Rosa, 48 years old, Hugo, 55 years old, and Ludwig, 16 years old, were murdered at the Kowno shooting site, Fort IX. It was Hans Wolfgang's 20th birthday.