How Nazi prison camp guard hid in plain sight as a beloved Chicago janitor for THREE DECADES revealed in new book
A Nazi prison camp guard hid in plain sight in America for nearly three decades after winning the trust of a suburban town whose residents adored him for his ‘kind acts’.
A new book reveals that Reinhold Kulle lied on his US visa application about the atrocities committed while guarding the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, where 40,000 Jews died.
He settled in Oak Park, Chicago where he became a beloved high school custodian known as an ‘exemplary’ employee who kept the building spotless.
But the revelation of his Nazi past nearly 30 years later split the town with many coming to his defense and saying he was the victim of a ‘persecution’.
Incredibly, they sent letters in support to the local paper saying ‘we’re all human’ and that he was a ‘doting grandfather’.
Nazi prison camp guard Reinhold Kulle hid in plain sight in America for nearly three decades, as revealed in a new book, Our Nazi by Michael Soffer. (Pictured: Kulle at Oak Park and River Forest High School in 1966, from Tabula, the school’s yearbook)
Pictured: A sketch of Kulle that appeared on the front cover of Trapeze, the student newspaper of Oak Park and River Forest High School where he worked, in 1983
One resident dismissed the suggestion Kulle was a Nazi and said that ‘Halloween is over and so is the Holocaust’.
Residents even threw Kulle a goodbye party when he was deported to Germany, which the local paper hailed as a ‘royal send off’.
Kulle’s story is detailed in a new book ‘Our Nazi: An American Suburb’s Encounter with Evil’, which is out now on Chicago University Press.
Written by Michael Soffer, a social studies teacher at Lake Forest High School in Illinois, the book describes how the Nazi guard grew up in Silesia in Germany and was a member of Hitler Youth.
He joined the infamous Waffen-SS division and after being injured fighting the Russians, was assigned to the notorious Gross-Rosen slave labor camp in Silesia.
While it was not an extermination camp like Auschwitz, prisoners were executed for minor infractions like failing to get out of bed quick enough.
During a festival for the guards, they were given a twisted surprise: instead of targets being used for shooting practice, they were to use dozens of newly-arrived members of the Polish resistance.
So high was the body count that the crematorium in the center of the camp where the human remains were burned struggled to keep up with the pace.
Soffer writes that Kulle’s duties included being stationed at the perimeter where his instructions were to shoot anyone fleeing on sight.
After being promoted to oversee 12 men, Kulle marched prisoners to a quarry where the 12-hour shifts were so brutal few lived for more than a month.
Pictured: Reinhold Kulle in his SS uniform, at Ellwangen, 1942. Kulle kept this photo for decades after the war, and presented it to the Office of Special Investigations during his deposition in 1982
Pictured: The entrance to the prisoners’ section of the Gross-Rosen prison camp where Kulle worked as a guard during the Nazi Germany era
By the Spring of 1944 the camp was so overcrowded that there were 40,000 prisoners there instead of the 13,000 it was designed for meaning conditions were horrendous.
When the war ended that year, the camp was shut down by the advancing Russian army and Kulle returned to civilian life and kept his past a secret.
When the US Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act (DPA) in 1948, he saw an opportunity for a new life in America.
Kulle and his wife Gertrud and children Ulricke and Rainer, applied and he lied on his forms, saying he was not in any Nazi groups and he was not in the Waffen-SS.
The book was written by Michael Soffer (pictured), a social studies teacher at Lake Forest High School in Illinois
Based on this, an American consular official, impressed with Kulle’s handsome face and his pretty wife, concluded that ‘it was hard to imagine a better candidate’ to emigrate to America.
The Kulles no doubt benefited from the US government’s efforts to keep Jews out of the country – meaning that it was ‘open season’ for Nazis to get into the country.
In 1957, Kulle and his family left Cuxhaven, Germany, on the MS Italia, destined for a new life in America.
They settled in Chicago, a popular option among former Nazis, and he applied for the job of custodian at Oak Park and River Forest High School.
Soon Kulle became an ‘indispensable’ member of the school and was ‘every faculty member’s go-to’ as he knew where to find everything in the building.
The school became ‘renowned’ for its cleanliness and Kulle became friends with the principal and the school leadership.
His quiet air of authority even meant that he was asked to help out disciplining some students.
Written by Michael Soffer, a teacher at the same suburban school, Our Nazi: An American Suburb’s Encounter With Evil details how the revelation of Reinhold Kulle’s dark past split the community in two – as some rallied to support him despite his crimes
Pictured: Invitation to Kulle’s retirement dinner, 1983. The school held Kulle in such high esteem that even after his dark history was revealed, they hosted a ‘retirement’ dinner for him
Soffer writes: ‘He slipped into obscurity, just another blue-collar worker in Middle America with a thick accent and an untold past’.
Kulle’s Nazi past stayed secret until 1979 when, after pressure from Congress, the Office of Special Investigations was set up to explore deportation proceedings against Germans living in America.
The unit had already tracked down another Nazi living near Oak Park, Albert Deutscher, who had shot and killed hundreds of Jews
Deutscher threw himself in front of a train after getting a letter asking him about his past.
Kulle met with investigators and admitted he lied on his visa application to enter the US.
Armed with the confession, the government began deportation proceedings and when it became public, opinion in Oak Park was split in two.
The city had prided itself on being a tolerant and diverse place, but Jewish residents were horrified about the amount of support that Kulle received.
One student at the school where Kulle worked, Kari Juel, said he was ‘one reason to be proud of the school’, adding he was a ‘very kind and friendly man’.
Juel wrote in a letter: ‘Many students, myself included, greatly respect him for who he is and what he has done for the school’.
Few could accept the idea that the man who had been part of their community could also have taken part in the mass slaughter of Jews.
The book details how after being promoted to oversee 12 men at the Gross-Rosen facility, Kulle marched prisoners to a quarry (pictured) where the 12-hour shifts were so brutal few lived for more than a month
During Kulle’s deportation proceedings, his character witnesses included Bob Wehrli, the recently retired chair of the school’s PE department.
He said Kulle was a ‘ten on a scale of ten for honesty, truthfulness, peacefulness, cooperation and friendliness’ adding that he had ‘excellent character’
According to Wehrli, Kulle was the victim of a ‘persecution’, a sentiment echoed by many who saw the case as an attack on a hard working member of the community.
Others compared his case to Joseph McCarthy and even Adolf Hitler – with Kulle playing the part of a Jew.
One letter said that ‘we all make mistakes’ and that ‘we’re all human’.
A furious Raymond Kinzie, a prominent local bank executive, wrote to the local paper: ‘I do not know Reinhold Kulle but I do know a witch hunt when I see one’.
He added: ‘Halloween is over and so is the Holocaust’.
Soffer writes: ‘The moral equations had been flipped. Kulle was no longer the oppressor: he was the victim. His friends, the men and women actively supporting a Holocaust perpetrator, had recast themselves as defenders of the little man.
‘Any internal angst they had felt about their relationship with Kulle – about what it meant to be friends with a Nazi – could be discarded.
‘They were not the bad guys….they were good liberals who ensured that an aging janitor had the right to a fair trial’.
Pictured: Part of Conrad Schellong’s SS file. After the war, he moved to the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago before settling in Portage Park on the city’s Northwest Side
Pictured: The Office of Special Investigations request for Kulle’s files in September 1981
Oak Park and River Forest High School was no exception and 20 members of the staff signed a letter chastising the local newspaper for reporting in a ‘sensational’ fashion.
Under intense pressure to act, the school placed Kulle on a ‘terminal leave of absence’ but secretly arranged for him to retire early once he lost his deportation case.
Some 250 guests turned up to his ‘appreciation banquet’ to say goodbye to Kulle held in a former opera house which had been renovated into one of the city’s finest properties.
On the invitation it read that ‘no man is a failure who has friends’ and praised Kulle for ‘25 years of distinguished service’.
Kulle was presented with a check for $1,500, the total of all the money raised from ticket sales and a sympathetic journalist in the Wednesday Journal, a local newspaper, called it a ‘royal send off’.
Kulle was deported to West Germany in 1987 and went to live with a relative in Lahr, where he had departed 30 years earlier to come to America.
He survived on the pension payments from the Illinois Metropolitan Retirement Fund until his death in 2006.
While some Nazis who were repatriated to Germany faced prosecution, Kulle did not, meaning that he died as he had lived – a free man.
