Lina Kurzweil née Finke lived only a few years in Bad Kissingen. She was born on June 22, 1884, the daughter of the merchant Lazarus Finke and his wife Babette Weickersheim in the Franconian town of Theilheim in the district of Schweinfurt (today a district of Waigolshausen) and grew up with seven (or six?) siblings in a family with many children. Lazarus Finke came from a long-established, widely branched Theilheim family and raised his children strictly religiously. His many years of involvement as a member of the Chewra Kadischa also showed his religious and social commitment to the Jewish community.

Lina was also influenced by this attitude. She attended an advanced training school in Würzburg from 1899 to 1902, trained as a nurse, and in April 1914 married Moses Kurzweil in Theilheim, who came from Bratislawa (then Hungary, now Slovakia) and worked as a cantor and shochet.

The couple first lived in Mönchsroth/Landkreis Ansbach, where their first son Walter was born in 1915. After the birth of two more sons - Isidor and Adolf - the family moved to Bad Kissingen in March 1921, where Moses Kurzweil accepted a position as cantor and shochet. The Kurzweils lived here in the Jewish community house in Promenadestrasse (then Maxstrasse 10). As early as August 1924, the Kurzweil family left the Franconian spa town again and moved to Treuchtlingen in the district of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen, where Lina's husband took over the vacant cantor and shochet position, which he held until 1938.

The family lived there on Uhlengasse in the front building of the synagogue, which was called the "Judenschule" and was traditionally the home of the community's cantor.

The neighbours of Uhlengasse obviously had very positive memories of the family: "There was a good relationship with the Kurzweils, who lived in the neighbouring synagogue. Cantor Moses Kurzweil was a person of respect for all the children. His wife Lina, who was a trained nurse, helped without distinction of religion when she was fetched" (Jewish Life in Treuchtlingen).

However, after the National Socialists came to power, the Jewish minority in the town suffered increasingly from growing anti-Semitism, which erupted in brutal form especially during the November pogrom of 1938:

The riots in Treuchtlingen began in the early morning hours of November 10. Members of the Treuchtlingen SA set fire to the synagogue as well as the Kurzweils' home. One witness recalled how the men in front of the cantor's house shouted, "Jud' open up, get out, we'll set fire to your house or we'll burn you!" (Michael Wildt ,...p.71....) The synagogue with the entire inventory, the Torah scrolls, the rituals as well as the residential building in front burned down to the foundation walls. More and more Treuchtlingen citizens also marched with the SA thugs to the Jewish homes and took part in the violent actions. Men, women and youths cheered on the thugs, looted the stores and destroyed apartments. Some of the Jewish residents were injured in the attacks and now fled the small town. On their way to the train station, they were taunted and beaten by the surrounding crowd. Of the 93 Jews still living in Treuchtlingen, all but three had left the town by November 11, 1938.

Lina Kurzweil, her husband Moses and their youngest son Theo also had to flee Treuchtlingen. They moved to Frankfurt am Main and lived there in Frankfurt's Nordend at Fichtestraße 5. The three older sons Walter, Isidor (Izchack) and Adolf (Amram) managed to escape to Palestine in time. They thus survived the Nazi era.

Lina and Moses Kurzweil, on the other hand, became victims of the Shoa. In September 1942, both were deported from Frankfurt to Theresienstadt. Lina died there in September 1943 and Moses survived his wife by only a few weeks. Their youngest son Theo, who lived in Berlin and in the "Landwerk Steckelsdorf" in Brandenburg before his deportation, was also deported from there as a 16-year-old together with 51 other mostly young people to Auschwitz in July 1942 and murdered. In the "Landwerk Steckelsdorf," a "Hachshara camp" that was supposed to prepare young people for emigration to Palestine, presumably he still had hopes of emigrating to Palestine like his older brothers - hopes that were not to be fulfilled.

Among Lina's siblings, too, there are numerous Shoa victims. Sara and her brother Benjamin died in Theresienstadt, Elsa was deported to Krasniczyn and murdered in the vicinity of Lublin, and Bertha and Jettchen were deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and then to Auschwitz in 1944 and murdered. Only her sister Miriam (Meta) survived the Nazi era, she emigrated to Paris and later to Palestine and died in Haifa/Israel in 1968 at the age of 91.