Marcie Miller remembers sitting in a high school auditorium listening to her father, Fritz Ottenheimer, tell the story of his experience in the Holocaust.

Mr. Ottenheimer was born in Konstanz, Germany, on March 18, 1925.

When Nazis ordered people in his city not to buy from Jewish vendors, Mr. Ottenheimer’s father replaced the wares in his shop window with his World War I medals. As the situation worsened for Jewish people in Germany, his family housed those who were fleeing to Switzerland. And in November 1938, Mr. Ottenheimer witnessed his father’s arrest, on what is now called Kristallnacht, or “night of broken glass,” when about 30,000 innocent Jewish men were taken to concentration camps.

After his father’s release from the Dachau concentration camp, Mr. Ottenheimer’s family immigrated to the United States in 1939. Mr. Ottenheimer returned to Germany in 1945, serving in the U.S. army to aid the “de-Nazification” process in his home country.

Sitting in that high school auditorium, “I started getting hysterical,” Mrs. Miller said.

It was the first time she had heard her father’s story in full.

Before then, she hadn’t thought of him as a Holocaust survivor, but simply as a kind and loving father. She has a picture of him at a family reunion in Ocean City, Md., after he’d just been struck by a wave, and “he had the greatest expression, one of pure joy.”

Mr. Ottenheimer died Thursday at age 92. That picture is how Mrs. Miller says she will remember him.

Calmness infused all that Mr. Ottenheimer did. “I’ve never heard him raise his voice,” Mrs. Miller said.

He was passionate about giving back and volunteered throughout his life at organizations including the Boy Scouts of America, the Rehabilitation Institute, the Pace School, Temple Sinai, the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh and tutoring programs. Although Mr. Ottenheimer had no official training, his son, Dan, said he was able to connect deeply with the children he helped. Mrs. Miller believes that her father’s traumatic childhood helped him to forge deep bonds with those who were struggling.

“There are people who talk about their faith. He just lived it,” said Rabbi James Gibson, who was Mr. Ottenheimer’s rabbi for about 30 years.

He and his wife, Goldie, were married on Dec. 28, 1952. Dan Ottenheimer said that his mother was more emotional than his father, and the two balanced each other out.

Mr. Ottenheimer was an engineer who studied at Oklahoma State University, earned his master’s degree at Carnegie Tech and worked for Westinghouse on projects ranging from research to nuclear power plant safety.

He loved the outdoors. His favorite activities included hiking, whitewater rafting, canoeing and exploring caves. Even walking to work brought him joy. Other hobbies included cooking and listening to classical music.

Mr. Ottenheimer didn’t speak about his childhood experiences with the Holocaust until after his father’s death. He then wrote a book, “Escape and Return: Memoirs of Nazi Germany”, published in 2000, and began to speak to young people.

“It was now his responsibility to carry on the story,” Dan Ottenheimer said.

Sara Weber, the younger Mr. Ottenheimer’s wife, said her father-in-law’s experience showed him that even good people could stand by and do nothing while tragedy occurred. She believes that his goal in sharing his story was to fight against this sometimes deadly inaction.

Inspired by his father, Dan Ottenheimer is working to bring bystander intervention workshops to Boston, where he lives.

“He believed in the goodness of humanity, but he saw what happened when that garden wasn’t tended to,” Rabbi Gibson said. “He was an antidote to the era of rage we live in. He was small in stature, but we have lost a giant.”

Mr. Ottenheimer is survived by his wife, who lives in Pittsburgh; his son; his daughter, who lives in Virginia; and four grandchildren.

His funeral will be held at Temple Sinai in Squirrel Hill at 10 a.m. Sunday. Visitation will be at 9 a.m., and shiva will be held at Temple Sinai at 7 p.m. Sunday and Monday. He will be buried in Temple Sinai Memorial Park.

Catherine Cray: ccray@post-gazette.com

First Published: July 23, 2017, 4:00 a.m.