On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the German Reich. Within a few months, the Nazis would intimidate Parliament—the "Reichstag"—into voting them full powers, thus creating a one-party, one man, dictatorship. Shortly after, they set aside the constitution—the Basic Rights of the Citizens—and created a total dictatorship.

A day was declared when all Germans were to boycott all Jewish places of business. The order was enforced by the paramilitary street thugs, the S.A.—the "Brown Shirts," feared for beating up their opponents. The Gestapo, the secret police, were given the power of making arrests without warrants.

Father decided to heed his brother Jakob's entreaties and to move his family to Sarrebrücken in the Sarre region, at the time under French administration.

Shortly afterwards, the population of the Sarreland voted to be reunited with their German brethren.

Alfred and Ernest Moritz, 1933-34
Alfred and Ernst Moritz.
Saarbrücken-Saar, 1933–1934.

This unexpected event, together with the illness of our Oma, the fact that moving to France would have meant learning a new language, and a fair amount of homesickness for his beloved "Heimat," led our parents to return to the family homestead in Becherbach.

Our father knew he was here among friends and nothing untoward would happen to him, a man of few but thought-out words.

He had believed that it was simply not possible that a handful of loudmouthed rabble-rousers could hold power for any length of time in the land of Goethe and of his beloved former commander, the respected Marshall Hindenburg.