Village life was interrupted by the First World War. All the brothers served in the Kaiser's Armies. Arguing that her first-born was on the frontlines, that Albert had been seriously wounded, that a third, Alfred, had lost his life, Oma Regina persuaded the authorities that her last-born, 20 year-old Jakob, be assigned to the less dangerous "Air Corps," it being, she wrote, that he thought "it might be fun."

Gefallen, Vermisst

Alfred Moritz, 1890-1916
Alfred Moritz, 1890–1916

Our father Ludwig was decorated for "bravery in front of the enemy in Galicia, on the Eastern Front," with the Iron Cross and, for his actions on the Western Front lines, with the "Badian Bravery Medal."

Our uncle Alfred (1890–1916) served in the infantry and gave his life for his fatherland.

After the war's end, in late 1919, a small nationalistic group, the "German Workers' Party," recruited an Austrian, Adolf Hitler, a spellbinding orator. He sought out like-minded extremists, developed a grandiose 25 point program—including the "solution to the Jewish Problem"—and changed the name of the party to "National Socialist German Workers' Party," the NSDAP, the Nazi party.

In 1942, Germania's new masters decreed that the name of the Jew "Alfred Moritz" be chiseled out of the local monument to the fallen heroes.

This was their way of rewriting world history. As they well knew, "Might makes Right."

After the disappearance of the "Thousand Year Reich," a brand-new monument with the inscription "Alfred Moritz (1890–1916)" and the names of the town's missing in the latest conflict was erected in, of all places, the Lutheran cemetery. Nowhere was mention made of the fact that uncle Alfred was not, and had not ever wanted to be, one of "them," the Goyim, the Gentiles.

In a morbid way, the virulent anti-Semite Martin Luther had had the last word, as it seemed as if a descendant of old man Isaak Moses had become a Lutheran, posthumously, by default, without his say.

Thankfully, Oma Regina had not lived to see this ignominy.