(Arutz Sheva) Renowned philanthropist and lay leader of American Jewry Eugen Gluck died this week in New York at the age of 92.

Gluck was a Holocaust survivor and was later instrumental in securing the rights of the Jewish people to rebuild their lives in Judea and Samaria. Together with his late wife, Jeanie, he was among the earliest American Jewish philanthropists to recognize the urgency and importance of extending the Jewish return to Zion into the recently liberated territories of Judea and Samaria and the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

Gluck was involved with multiple institutions and projects to benefit Israel and world Jewry including Shaarei Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem, the Magen David Adom emergency responder organzation, and the Yad VaShem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem.

But the bulk of Gluck’s philanthropic activities were dedicated to the renewal of Jewish life in the ancient biblical town of Beit El. For four decades, the Glucks organized, sponsored and presided over the Bet El Institutions’ Winter Gala, what became the largest Zionist dinner on the East Coast of the United States.