Therese Wittekind belongs to the Kissingen victims of the Nazi “Euthanasieprogramm” (euthanasia program).

She was born in Bad Kissingen on 29 April 1864 as the sixth child of Salomon Wittekind and his wife Nanny, née Meininger, and had five older siblings: Simon (*1854), Aron (*1856), Benedikt (*1857), Bertha (*1859 - died just a few months after her birth) and Regina (*1862). The Wittekinds were a long-established, widely branched Kissingen family whose roots go back to the beginning of the 19th century. Therese's grandfather Aron Simon Wittekind lived in the "Judenhof" and had been granted the right to live and practise a profession in Kissingen in 1806 as a ‘protected Jew’ of the Barons of Erthal. He earned his living in the ‘silk, wool and cotton trade’ (cf. Kissingen address book 1838, p. 37).

Therese's father, who had married Nanny Meininger from Burgkunstadt in 1853, was a merchant on the market square according to the Kissingen address book of 1865. He died in March 1892 at the age of 78. At this time, the family lived at Zwingergasse 5.

Not very much is known about Therese's life. She stayed unmarried all her life. Due to a walking disability, she was unable to work and wore a prosthetic foot from 1914 at the latest. She made a living from the rental income from her parents' house - a small apartment building in the old part of Bad Kissingen at Zwingergasse 5 - and through regular support from the Jewish community, which also exempted her from paying church tax. Since 1904 at the latest, she has also repeatedly received donations from the Henriette and Simon Rosenau Foundation, the Berolzheimer Foundation, the Leopold and Frieda Hork Foundation and the Karoline Rosenau Foundation, as well as from the Chevra Association. In addition, she often took over the wake for the deceased for the Chevra Association and received financial compensation for this.

In June 1940, she was admitted to the Römershag medical and nursing home in Brückenau, which was run by the "Erlöserschwestern" (Würzburg). She only stayed in this institution for a short time, as it was heavily occupied. When a further 20 patients from the Rheinpfalz were transferred from there to Römershag in September 1940, Therese Wittekind was transferred together with other residents of the home to the medical and nursing home in Eglfing-Haar in Upper Bavaria on 14 September as part of the ‘T4 special action’ for Jewish patients and was most likely deported to the Hartheim killing centre in Austria a few days later on 20 September and murdered in the gas chamber there on the same day (cf. Biography of Therese Wittekind, Stumbling Stone Initiative Bad Brückenau, October 2021).

After the murder, the Nazi authorities often tried to access the victims' assets. In January 1942, Josef and his sister Herta Losmann - who was mistakenly thought to be a sister of Therese Wittekind - received a letter asking them to pay 452 RM for care and cremation from the estate of the ‘deceased’. The Losmanns - obviously co-owners of the house in Zwingergasse, for which they had a general power of attorney - were led to believe that Therese Wittekind had died in the Cholm mental hospital near Lublin on 28 January 1941. The demand for fictitious costs for care and cremation also ultimately served to conceal the actual procedure and to plunder the murdered woman.