Rolf Joseph (December 11, 1920 – November 28, 2012) was a witness and person persecuted by the Nazi regime.

He grew up with his brother in Berlin, having a typical childhood of school and soccer-playing until the persecution of the Jews began in the 1930s.

On November 10, 1938, he saw and was afraid by the devastation of Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) to Jewish businesses and synagogues.

After his parents were taken from their home to concentration camps, Rolf and his brother Alfred went into hiding, only possessing what they could carry.

She had few possessions, but she fed them and a friend Arthur Fordanski from her rationed food and what discarded vegetables that she picked up from the weekly markets.

He escaped during a train ride to Auschwitz concentration camp and later by jumping out of a hospital building.

[1] His brother Alfred, one year younger than Rolf, was nicknamed "kleene keule" (small club).

Jewish shops and synagogues were targeted, with windows broken, and buildings set on fire by some Berliners and the SA.

[2] The boys asked their patriotic father to leave Germany, but he was loyal to the country that he fought for in World War I and received the Iron Cross.

Rolf also made equipment for the Wehrmacht (Nazi armed forces) in a carpentry shop in the Pankow district of Berlin.

[6] The brothers hid in train station bathrooms and the forest, evading Nazi soldiers, for about four months.

[5][9] Burde took them, along with Arthur Fordanski, a friend of Alfred's, into her basement apartment in Berliner Wedding district,[5][10] an area that was inhabited by working-class people.

[5] In addition, since Marie Burde was a vegetarian,[5] she was able to give the meat she was able to buy with her food stamps to the men.

[14][b] After the house at Tegeler Straße 13 was destroyed by a bombing raid in the fall of 1943, the men and Burde went to Schönow near Bernau to a lot she owned there, where they built a rough shelter[5][c] in the spring of 1944.

[5] Having been outed by friends,[12] Alfred was arrested in Berlin in August 1944 and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then to Bergen-Belsen.

[2] After the war, Joseph married Lydia, a German Jew who had survived the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Since then he has regularly visited schools and told the young people his personal story of survival and also his memories of Marie Burde.