Fritz Paul Gluckstein died on Feb. 14. He was born on Jan. 24, 1927, in Berlin, to a Jewish father and a Christian mother, Georg and Hedwig Heinrich Gluckstein. When Hitler came to power in 1933, his father was dismissed from office, and the family lived in drastically reduced circumstances. Raised as a Jew, Fritz was a Geltungsjude, a counted Jew, and was subject to all the restrictions imposed on the Jews of Germany, including wearing the Yellow Star.
Fritz and his father were assigned to forced labor gangs, which were sent to demolish damaged buildings after air raids. When the war ended, Fritz returned to a special course to finish his high school diploma.
In January 1948, with the help of HIAS, he immigrated to America, arriving in St. Paul, Minn. There he studied at the University of Minnesota, receiving the degree of doctor of veterinary medicine in 1955. After serving two years in the United States Army, he worked for the Department of Agriculture in Ames, Iowa, and Washington, D.C., and the Smithsonian Institution. In 1966, Dr. Gluckstein was commissioned as an officer in the United States Public Health Service and was assigned to the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. There he established the veterinary section, which he headed until his retirement in 1993.
Following his retirement, he became a survivor-volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He translated German documents, often written in an old-fashioned script called Sutterlin, which was no longer taught in German schools after 1941.
He is survived by his devoted wife of 24 years, Maran Beth Gluckstein; his daughter from his first marriage to the late Ethel Gluckstein, Ruth Gold; her daughters, his beloved granddaughters, Emily and Brielle Roe; two stepchildren, Avihai and Malka Ostchega, their spouses, Liliana Mathis and Justin Are, and their children, who brought him so much joy in the last years of his life, Eatom and Ilanit Are, and Simon Robert Fritz Ostchega.
