Ludwig Glaser was born in Berlin on April 11, 1925.
His father was Hugo Glaser, his mother Rosa Glaser, née Feldmann. Ludwig had an older brother, Hans Wolfgang, who was born on November 25, 1921. At the time of his birth, the family lived at Turmstraße 73 in Tiergarten, now Moabit, Berlin-Mitte. Shortly before Ludwig's seventh birthday in 1932, the Glasers moved to the quieter Elberfelder Strasse 29, 2nd floor.
Ludwig'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, which meant that 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.
Ludwig Glaser's parents were wealthy, as evidenced by the documents of the restitution application of Friedrich Feldmann, 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 is unclear; their property may have helped them for a time.
Unfortunately, we know very little about Ludwig. What school did he go to? What kind of degree did he graduate with? Was he a member of a youth group, such as sports or the Aliyah, an international Jewish organization that sought to bring Jewish children and youth to safety in Palestine? Had he started a professional training? These and other questions must unfortunately remain unanswered. We can assume, however, that as the son of wealthy Jewish parents, he received a careful education, celebrated 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, Ludwig'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.
Ludwig was deported with his parents and his brother Hans Wolfgang on November 17, 1941, along with 1002 other Jewish people from Grunewald station to Kowno in Lithuania. Eight days later, on November 25, 1941, Ludwig, 16 years old, Rosa, 48 years old, Hugo, 55 years old, and Hans Wolfgang, 20 years old, were murdered at the Kowno shooting site, Fort IX. It was Hans Wolfgang's 20th birthday.