Marie Burde earned her living as a newspaper vendor and by collecting rags. Around 1943, a woman she knew asked her for help with a Jew who was in hiding. Burde, who lived alone in dire poverty, was immediately prepared to take Rolf Joseph into her basement apartment in Berlin-Wedding.
One day, the 23-year-old Joseph was arrested when spot-checked by the Wehrmacht. He managed to escape from a train bound for Auschwitz and return to Marie Burde, who had meanwhile also taken in his brother Alfred and his friend Arthur Fordanski, also 23.
Burde fed the men by sharing her sparse food rations with them and collecting vegetables thrown away at markets. After her basement apartment was bombed at the end of 1943, she housed the three men on a plot of land she owned in Schönow, north of Berlin, in the spring of 1944. Rolf Joseph remained there until the Red Army’s arrival at the end of April 1945. After the war, Rolf and Alfred Joseph stayed in touch with their rescuer and were able to support Marie Burde in return.