Eva Schocken Glaser, president of Schocken Books, Inc., died yesterday after a brief illness. She was 63 years old and resided in Scarsdale, N.Y. Mrs. Glaser, the former Chawa Schocken, was born in Zwickau, Germany. She came to the United States from Jerusalem with her family in the late 1930’s.
Her father, Salman Schocken, founded Schocken Verlag in Berlin in the 1920’s and the American company was established in New York after World War II. In 1934 the firm became publisher of Franz Kafka when the Nazi regime ruled that Aryan publishers could no longer publish Jewish writers.
Keenly interested in Jewish cultural life, Salman Schocken continued to publish Jewish authors, such as Kafka and Martin Buber, until the Gestapo put an end to the publishing house in November 1938. Schocken, who had been living in Jerusalem since 1933, started the concern again in Tel Aviv.
Mrs. Glaser became the head of the publishing house in New York after the death of her brother, Theodore, in 1975. Her only surviving brother, Gershon Schocken, is publisher of Schocken Press, Israel, and Haaretz. Mrs. Glaser expanded the list of books to reflect her interest in education, women’s studies, childhood development and psychology.