Josef Rabinowitz was one of the external students attending Kissingen Realschule. He was born in Frankfort/ Main on December 3, 1905 as the son of Shmaryahu Schmerl Rabinowitz and his wife Pessel, née Zweber. His parents had been born in Jerusalem, which belonged to the Ottoman Empire in those days, and lived in an environment there that was characterized by European features. The family belonged to “Altem Jischuw”, the early pre-Zionist settlement of Palestine of presumably 20,000 mostly orthodox Jews who lived in the towns of Safed, Tiberias, Hebron and Jerusalem. Josef’s father whose ancestors came from Lithuania was a wine merchant and his mother came from a Hungarian family of scholars.

At the turn of the century, the Rabinowitz family left Palestine and moved to Frankfort/ Main as Josef’s father Schmerl couldn’t cope with the climate. In Frankfort, Josef’s father ran an import business for kosher “Palestine wines” and “fine old brandies”.

When and why Josef Rabinowitz went to Bad Kissingen and attended Kissingen Realschule, is not clear at the moment. Maybe it was in 1915 when his father had died. 

Later Josef Rabinowitz lived in Hamburg/ Altona and worked as a teacher. He worked as a religion teacher at the Israelite Community and Religious School of the "High German Israelite Community in Altona". In February 1935, he emigrated to Palestine and married Thea Rosenthal there in August 1945. She had been born in Berlin in 1910 and later lived in Hamburg and could emigrate to England during the Nazi Era.

In 1963 the couple travelled to Brazil where Thea’s parents and her brother had emigrated in the Nazi Era. In the 1960s, both lived temporarily in Zurich several times, but returned to Israel in April 1971.

Josef Rabinowitz died in Israel, the date of his death is not known.
His brother Jakob had also emigrated to Palestine and his brother Baruch, who had also lived in Bad Kissingen for a short time, had already emigrated to Palestine in the 1920s.