Bad Rappenau

In (Bad) Rappenau a Jewish community existed from the 16th/17th century until 1937. In 1572/74 the "Jud von Rappenau" (probably identical with the Gumprecht von Rappenau mentioned in 1575/76) is mentioned for the first time, who lived among other things from money lending. In the Wimpfener Judenordnung of 1598, which regulated the relationship to foreign Jews, Rappenau is also mentioned as a Jewish place of residence. There is further mention of Jews in Rappenau in the 2nd half of the 17th century. The local lordship of the von Gemmingen family had taken in the Jew Sander around 1670, who rebuilt a house destroyed in the Thirty Years' War and collected the "Judenzoll" for the lordship (from Jews passing through). The Judenzoll remained in Jewish hands: in 1677/78 it was leased to Israel, in 1689/90 to Marum, in 1697/98 to Moses and Nathan, in 1699/1700 to Moses for five gulden annually each. 

In the 18th century there were three to four Jewish families in the village at any one time. They lived from the cattle trade, goods trade or the trade with country products. In 1933 there were ten Jewish inhabitants in Bad Rappenau (0.6% of 1,758). During the November pogrom in 1938 the shop window of the still existing Jewish store (presumably the textile store of Sigmund Traub) was smashed. The last five Rappenau Jews, already over 70 years old, were deported to Gurs on October 22, 1940 (Josef and Mina Metzger, Sigmund and Mina Traub, Sara Adler). Of them, only Mina Traub survived, who in 1946 emigrated to her son in New York, where she died in 1952.

From September 1944 to March 1945, a sub-commando of the Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace existed in Bad Rappenau as a sub-commando of the Neckarelz camp. The prisoners, presumably including Jewish persons, worked in an SS construction yard, in agriculture and in a motor vehicle workshop. The camp was on the site of the former salt works (prisoner numbers unknown).