During the 1930s and 40s, Emma Trostler was the superintendent of the building at Großbeerenstraße 92 in Berlin-Kreuzberg, where she ran a laundry. She met Otto Weidt in 1939 at the latest when he opened a workshop for the blind in the building’s basement apartment.
After the workshop relocated to Rosenthaler Straße 39 in the Mitte district, the Jewish Horn family moved into the basement apartment in around 1940. The father and son worked for Otto Weidt. When the Horn family went underground in early 1943, Weidt arranged for Karl Deibel to take the apartment, where the latter hid people at risk in the subsequent years.
Emma Trostler not only helped by tolerating the illegal activities as superintendent, but also supported Weidt and Deibel in providing food for the people in hiding. Trostler’s laundry and Deibel’s basement apartment were linked by a secret passageway. Trostler exchanged Weidt’s brushes and brooms for food, cooked for the people in hiding, and employed several of them illegally in her laundry.