Hugo Glaser was born in Brieg, Silesia, on March 27, 1886, the only child of wealthy parents. He studied pharmacy at the Technical University of Braunschweig. In 1911 he received his license to practice as a pharmacist.
Nine years later, in May 1920, Hugo married Rosa Feldmann, a native of Buttenhausen, Württemberg, in Mannheim. He was 34 years old.
Rosa Feldmann was born on December 22, 1893 in Buttenhausen, Württemberg, the seventh of a total of 9 siblings. Her mother's name was Jeannette Feldmann and she was a née Löwenthal. Her father, Wolf Feldmann, earned his money as a traveler. Her family later moved to Saarwellingen in the Rhine Province, now Rhineland-Palatinate. Rosa was a younger sister of Lina Wolf, née Feldmann.
After their marriage, the couple went to Berlin, where they moved into an apartment at Turmstrasse 73 in Tiergarten in June 1920. Soon their son Hans Wolfgang was born, in November 1921, and four years later, in April 1925, son Ludwig was born. For 12 years the Glasers lived in Turmstraße, then on March 24, 1932 they moved to the quieter Elberfelder Straße 29, 2nd floor.
Hugo Glaser was employed in the 1930s 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 for a boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933, the Jewish pharmacists in Berlin began their decline. On January 31, 1939, Jewish pharmacists had their licenses revoked, which meant that they were no longer allowed to practice their profession.
Hugo Glaser was arrested in 1938, presumably as a result of the November pogroms, 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.
Hugo and Rosa Glaser were wealthy, as evidenced by the documents of the restitution application of Friedrich Feldmann, who tried for over 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 and the ban on Jewish pharmacists in early 1939 is unclear; their property may have helped them for a time.
In the summer of 1939, shortly before the start of World War II, Rosa's sister 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.
On November 17, 1941, the Glaser family was deported with 1002 other Jewish people from the Grunewald train station to Kowno in Lithuania. Eight days later, on November 25, 1941, Hugo, 55 years old, Rosa, 48 years old, Hans Wolfgang, 20 years old, and Ludwig, 16 years old, were murdered at the Kowno shooting site, Fort IX. It was Hans Wolfgang's 20th birthday.