The Nazi of Oak Park
September 11, 2024 at 07:30PMReinhold Kulle was an SS member in the elite Death’s Head division and a guard at Gross-Rosen concentration camp. After the war, when Kulle had a final visa interview at the US Consulate in Frankfurt in 1957, he kept those dark details about his past a secret. In this excerpt from Our Nazi: An American Suburb’s Encounter with Evil, Michael Soffer recounts Kulle’s second life in the US as a chief custodian at Oak Park and River Forest High School in Chicago—and what happened when people discovered a respected member of their community was a Nazi.
Kulle walked in, his collared short-sleeved work shirt covering the slight paunch of middle age. Swanson looked him in the eye and asked if the allegations were true. Had he really been a guard at a Nazi concentration camp?
Yes, Kulle told Swanson, he had worked at Gross-Rosen, but he had never even fired his rifle. It was just a prison, he added.
And he hadn’t said this on his visa application?
No, Kulle admitted. He had not.
And he had been in the Hitler Youth?
Yes, Kulle answered. He had joined the Nazi youth movement as a teenager, but he had never been an active participant.
Swanson peered through the large, thin-framed glasses that crossed his angular face. Kulle looked uneasy, as if he knew he was in trouble. Swanson was not finding his answers convincing. But after 23 years, Kulle had earned some compassion, some grace.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/09/11/the-nazi-of-oak-park/
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