The Berlin interior designer Werner Rewald lost his job in 1933, because he was Jewish. He set up his own business as an upholsterer. In the fall of 1939, he was deployed as a forced laborer harvesting potatoes in Brandenburg.
From 1940, he performed forced labor for the Deutsche Reichsbahn railroad company. When his brother Kurt was deported with his family at the beginning of 1943, Werner Rewald went underground along with his wife Ilse. Werner Rewald found refuge with friends, the couple Paul and Elli Fromm. He could not stay there long, however. He had to change his accommodation frequently, sometimes living in a guesthouse in the center of Berlin and sometimes in a garden shed on the edge of the city. He made a constant effort to find work. This meant he was less visible in public during the day, and also earned the money he needed for food and housing.
Fritz Wolzenburg, Werner Rewald’s boss at the Reichsbahn, got hold of Deutsche Reichsbahn identity papers for Werner and Ilse Rewald in the names of Ernst and Maria Treptow. In February 1944 the Rewalds found a long-term refuge with the composer Hanning Schröder in Berlin-Zehlendorf, where they were able to stay until the end of the war.