At the end of October 1942, all Jewish men in Norway were to be arrested. Four young men in Oslo narrowly evaded arrest. They asked the gardener Rolf Syversen for help. Syversen turned to his acquaintance Alf Pettersen, who had experience as an escape helper. Pettersen suggested they work together. Syversen immediately agreed, although it would also endanger his pregnant wife Klara. The two men founded an escape network with the cover name Carl Fredriksen Transport.
Rolf Syversen brought more and more people wanting to escape to his nursery. From there, they were taken to the Swedish border by truck. The network brought around 1,000 endangered Jews to safety by these means.
When several members of the network were uncovered and had to flee, Rolf Syversen and a number of other helpers continued aiding escapes, using trains along a different route.
On July 10, 1943, Rolf Syversen was arrested during a stop-check on an Oslo marketplace and interned in Grini police detention camp. He was shot dead along in a forest north of Oslo with eight other prisoners on October 30, 1944. Klara Syversen did not learn of her husband’s murder until after the war.