Heinrich Benedick belonged to the Jews who spent only a short time in Bad Kissingen. 

He was born in Albersweiler in the Palatinate (Pfalz) on October 3, 1885, where his family can be traced back to the early 18^th century. They had a match factory there and belonged to the well-to-do bourgeoisie (See H.J. Beck, Kissingen war unsere Heimat…). Heinrich Benedick married Flora Scheuer from Gelnhausen in November 1922 and had two sons with her, Lothar Leopold (*1923) and Hans (Jean) (*1927). The family lived in Pirmasens until Heinrich got a divorce from his wife.

When in the face of the imminent war areas near the border in the West of Germany were to be evacuated, approximately 600 000 people from the Palatinate and the Saar Area were brought to areas “safe from the war” in the centre of Germany, Flora Benedick got do Halle, where she took over the management of the Jewish Old People’s Home in Boelckestrasse. Heinrich Benedick was arrested in the course of the November Pogrom in 1938, deported into Dachau Concentration Camp and stayed imprisoned there from November 12 till December 1938. 

After his release he was relocated presumably in 1939 in the course of the above-mentioned evacuation scheme and moved to Bad Neustadt. From there he got to Bad Kissingen in December 1939 and lived in the house of the former cattle dealer Lazarus Frank in Erhardstrasse 8 till January 8, 1940. Then he went to Nuremberg, where he lived in one of the 13 Jews’ Houses of the city in Knauerstrasse 27 till his deportation in November 1941. From there he was deported to Riga-Jungfernhof and killed. His date of death and details about his death are unknown.

His wife Flora and his son Lothar also became victims of the Shoa. Both were deported from Halle to Lublin in May 1942 and were killed in Sobibor Extermination Camp. It is possible that Lothar was already “selected” for Majdanek Concentration Camp in Lublin and killed. Only the younger son Hans who called himself Jean after his emigration to Southern France in 1939 survived the Nazi-era and died in Metz in 2004.