Jakob Rabinowitz lived in Bad Kissingen for only a short time. He was born in Jerusalem on July 17, 1896 as the son of Shmaryahu Schmerl Rabinowitz and his wife Pessel, née Zweber. His parents had also been born in Jerusalem, which belonged to the Ottoman Empire in those days, and lived in a European-dominated neighbourhood there. The family belonged to the “Alte Jischuw”, the about 20 000 early, pre-Zionist settlers in Palestine. Most of them were Orthodox Jews who lived in the towns of Safed, Tiberias, Hebron and Jerusalem. Jakob’s father, whose ancestors had come from Lithuania, was a wine merchant, and his mother was an offspring of a family of Hungarian scholars.

About the turn of the century, the Rabinowitz family left Palestine and moved to Frankfort/ Main because the Schmerl father couldn’t endure the climate. In Frankfort, Baruch’s father ran an import business for kosher “Palestine wines” and “fine old Cognacs” (brandies).

After his younger brothers Baruch and Josef had also lived in Bad Kissingen for a short time in 1918, Jakob Rabinowitz moved into the Franconian spa town in July 1919 and was registered as living in Theresienstrasse with the Jeidel family as their home-schooling tutor during the spa season. Possibly, he privately taught the children of Jewish doctors and businessmen there who spent the spa season in Bad Kissingen. In September 1919, he already checked out again for Frankfort. 

There, he married Lina Lustig who came from Polish Nowy Sacz in April 1921. The couple moved to Fürth and ran a white goods business there in Marienstrasse 37. Their two children Ruth and Leo were born in Fürth in 1925 and 1928.

When the situation for Jewish citizens got worse and worse during the Nazi era, the family emigrated to Dutch Gravenhage no later than in 1937 and then to Le Hague. In March/ April 1939 - few weeks before the invasion of German troops – the family got an exit visa to Palestine and could escape Nazi terror in time that way.

Concerning the further lives of Jakob Rabinowitz and his family it is only known that they were granted citizenship for Palestine in 1946. Jakob’s brothers Josef and Isaak also succeeded in fleeing to Palestine with their families.