Following Solomon Breuer's death, in 1926, Joseph Breuer succeeded him as Rosh Yeshiva which he practically had already been before his father's death. Joseph Jonah Horowitz succeeded Solomon Breuer as rabbi. In 1933, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved the yeshiva to Fiume, Italy, where he had assumed the rabbinate, but this arrangement lasted only until the next year and the family and the yeshiva returned to Frankfurt. It was formally dissolved by the Nazis in 1935, but continued to function unofficially. On the day after Kristallnacht, Breuer was arrested but subsequently released. The family left Germany, initially to Antwerp. A former pupil was then, with the assistance of Bernard Revel, able to procure an affidavit of support, which enabled Breuer and his family to relocate to New York in 1939. Bernard Revel offered Joseph Breuer a teaching position in his institution, which he brusquely turned down. He reportedly said that he would rather "clean the streets".