Born 1883, Emma Trostler was the superintendent at Großbeerenstraße 92 in Berlin-Kreuzberg during the 1930s and 40s, and ran a commercial laundry there. Otto Weidt met her in 1939, if not before, when he opened his workshop for the blind in the building’s basement. After the workshop relocated to Rosenthaler Straße 39, the Jewish Horn family moved into the vacated basement apartment around 1940. The father and son worked for Otto Weidt.
When the Horns went underground at the beginning of 1943, Weidt sublet the apartment to Karl Deibel, who hid people at risk there over the subsequent months. 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. The laundry and Karl Deibel’s basement apartment were connected by a secret corridor. Emma Trostler exchanged Otto Weidt’s brushes and brooms for food, cooked for the people in hiding, and employed some of them illegally in her laundry. Emma Trostler died in Berlin in 1949.
