After their parents’ deportation in 1943, the Jewish brothers Alfred and Rolf Joseph went into hiding in Berlin and were forced to spend the next few months sleeping in forests or stations. Via a non-Jewish acquaintance of their mother’s, Rolf Joseph found refuge with Marie Burde. Living in abject poverty, she was spontaneously willing to take him into her basement apartment in the Wedding district and share her meager food rations with him. After a time, she also took in Alfred Joseph and his friend Arthur Fordanski.
Her basement apartment was destroyed in an air raid at the end of 1943, and in the spring of 1944 Burde took the three men to stay on her plot of land in Schönow, north of Berlin. Alfred Joseph was arrested at the home of acquaintances in August 1944 and taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, but survived. After the war, the brothers kept in touch with their rescuer and were able to support Marie Burde in turn.