The Jewish Frank and Spiegel families were closely connected to Lauterecken before Nazi persecution forced them from their homes. Otto Frank, born in 1906, was a cattle dealer like his father Sigmund. In 1938 he fled with his wife Hilde to the United States, where his mother Johanna had already escaped; their departure marked the end of Jewish life in Lauterecken. Pharmacist Samuel August Spiegel and his wife Pauline Ida, formerly respected members of the local community, moved to Wiesbaden in 1930. Facing deportation in August 1942, they took their own lives. Their daughter Elisabetha Klara escaped to the United States, while their son August Theodor died in Wiesbaden in 1941. Jan Lichowski, a Polish forced labourer born in 1913, was punished under Nazi racial laws after a forbidden relationship with a German woman. Arrested by the Gestapo, he was hanged near Lauterecken on 27 February 1942 as a warning to other Polish workers.
