What do you think?
Rate this book
Our Nazi: An American Suburb’s Encounter with Evil
The first book to lay bare the life of a Nazi camp guard who settled in a Chicago suburb and to explore how his community and others responded to discoveries of Nazis in their midst.
Reinhold Kulle seemed like the perfect school employee. But in 1982, as his retirement neared, his long-concealed secret came to light. The chief custodian at Oak Park and River Forest High School outside Chicago had been a Nazi, a member of the SS, and a guard at a brutal slave labor camp during World War II.
Similar revelations stunned communities across the country. Hundreds of Reinhold Kulles were gradually men who had patrolled concentration camps, selected Jews for execution, and participated in mass shootings—and who were now living ordinary suburban lives. As the Office of Special Investigations raced to uncover Hitler’s men in the United States, neighbors had to reconcile horrific accusations with the helpful, kind, and soft-spoken neighbors they thought they knew. Though Nazis loomed in the American consciousness as evil epitomized, in Oak Park—a Chicago suburb renowned for its liberalism—people rose to defend Reinhold Kulle, a war criminal.
Drawing on archival research and insider interviews, Oak Park and River Forest High School teacher Michael Soffer digs into his community’s tumultuous response to the Kulle affair. He explores the uncomfortable truths of how and why onetime Nazis found allies in American communities after their gruesome pasts were uncovered.
Reinhold Kulle seemed like the perfect school employee. But in 1982, as his retirement neared, his long-concealed secret came to light. The chief custodian at Oak Park and River Forest High School outside Chicago had been a Nazi, a member of the SS, and a guard at a brutal slave labor camp during World War II.
Similar revelations stunned communities across the country. Hundreds of Reinhold Kulles were gradually men who had patrolled concentration camps, selected Jews for execution, and participated in mass shootings—and who were now living ordinary suburban lives. As the Office of Special Investigations raced to uncover Hitler’s men in the United States, neighbors had to reconcile horrific accusations with the helpful, kind, and soft-spoken neighbors they thought they knew. Though Nazis loomed in the American consciousness as evil epitomized, in Oak Park—a Chicago suburb renowned for its liberalism—people rose to defend Reinhold Kulle, a war criminal.
Drawing on archival research and insider interviews, Oak Park and River Forest High School teacher Michael Soffer digs into his community’s tumultuous response to the Kulle affair. He explores the uncomfortable truths of how and why onetime Nazis found allies in American communities after their gruesome pasts were uncovered.
296 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 24, 2024
21 people are currently reading
314 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
April 7, 2024
This relatively short book aims to tell the story of how a former Nazi immigrated to the United States a few years after WWII, the manner in which he integrated into life there, and the events that unfolded once he was unmasked, tried, and deported back to Germany.
The author says that this started as a high school History lesson that he decided to prepare due to his concerns about the rise of antisemitism and that the memory of the Holocaust was washing away with the passage of time, but that due to the inquisitiveness of his students, the History lesson evolved into a full-blown book aimed at giving as best an answer he could to the students' tonne of questions, more so when he dug up the true story of how a Nazi had not just found refuge in their comfortable suburb of Chicago but had worked in the very same school, a prestigious one in the area, where Soffer taught.
The intent I applaud, and I think the book is intended mainly for that audience (high school students) based on the basic information it provides and the tone of the book, and for teachers that would like to discuss WWII and the Holocaust in class. Maybe also for the readership without much familiarity with this topic.
But definitely not for more advanced learners of History. I found it basic, and thought it didn't provide any new insights as I had hoped. I had been hoping for insights into how come a SS-man had integrated so well in America and what the people living in his same suburb thought after he was discovered, and whilst there was definitely that, it was also predictable and not really unusual. I've known other similar stories of "Nazis amongst us" and the public's reaction. I still distinctly recall the interview to Klaus Barbie's housemaid, for example. And I learnt more from those that from this book.
The reason that kept me from appreciating this book more? Mainly the digressions and the WWII history speed-run lesson Soffer crams into this. The history brush-up might be fine for his students, but someone like me would already know and even the lay readership can learn the same with a quick search online. It's boring, dull, and often exasperating. I already know that, why are you telling me this? I want to hear about Kulle, not get a CliffNotes rundown of history, and please no more weird remarks that only digress and don't add to the topic at hand. That's was my main problem.
Another thing is that the subject of the book, SS-Unterscharführer Reinhold Kulle is . . . terribly and unutterably boring, capital B. He wasn't particularly remarkable in any way whatsoever, neither for battlefront deeds with his SS-unit nor for his cruelty at the camp. He wasn't even at one of the infamous concentration or extermination camps but at a slave labour one, and did mostly perimeter guard duty and outside duty, and wasn't known by prisoners to have been any worse than the rest of camp personnel. Like many SS-guards, he got assigned camp duty whilst recovering from a battle wound, too. In sum, nothing remarkable about him, good or bad. Not even his pre-war backstory is anything but bland: typical Weimar-era German child growing up in a hard-pressed country family, gets indoctrinated by the usual youth groups, joins the NSDAP and later the SS looking for a future and a livelihood, etc. A through and through good little cog in a gigantic murder machine.
An ordinary man, indeed, in the Christopher Browning's book sense. But Browning was not just insightful but got you interested in the topic of the cogs in the machine; he was thought-provoking.
And how did this boring little cog end up in America? Simple: by lying about his SS past and omitting key information in his US Consulate visa interview, the same way lots of criminals and fugitives have entered the US and still do. Nothing innovative or unusual about it, Kulle had lied about his wartime service, wasn't caught in Germany, lied to the US Consul, and committed immigration fraud this way. In America, he got helped by relatives, got a well-paying job as janitor in an enormous high school, had a nice home, raised his children as Americans. Very typical overall.
Even the way he got caught is typical: too late, many decades later, when all the big fish were gone and only small fish were left for a mostly pat-in-the-back spree of trials so a few could feel better about past denazification failures. Cogs like Kulle were denounced, some got tried and sent back to Germany, some were tried in Germany itself, like Demjanjuk, and some weren't tried even in Germany. In Kulle's case, he was caught in 1982, tried sometime later in the US for the immigration fraud case (not for his Nazi past, that corresponded to German jurisdiction), deported to his country, and lived there free until he died in 2006, because his own country wouldn't try him for his past. The End.
Meh. Another tale of failure of justice as old as WWII. And I'm supposed to find this interesting somehow? Well, I don't. I was bored out of my mind. Bored by the digressions, bored, bored, bored. The only flashes of interest for me were when the book talked about Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan, the SS-Helferin that was a guard at Majdanek and infamous as such. Far more interesting personage than Kulle, and who also immigrated to the US, integrated into society, married, and got caught and tried. If the book had Braunsteiner-Ryan as resident Nazi to an American suburb, I'd have been vastly more invested. And not only because she is by herself interesting as a case study for this topic but also because the SS-women are so little written about even now. Just think of how long it took for a biography of the highest-ranking female SS to be published compared to books about SS-Guard #24567 from Camp Whatisitsname.
The part about the suburbanites' reaction to Kulle's trial wasn't much enlightening to me, either. Again, it was the expected range of disagreements from those who wanted Kulle to be forgiven as it'd been decades and he was "good" now to those who wanted him tried and punished, preferably deported. No surprises here. The people who knew Kulle the most were the ones more inclined to be forgiving, or at the very least describe him in good terms, as opposed to the activists and the Jewish community. Were we supposed to expect anything different? The "encounter with evil" line in the title makes it sound as if the suburb was forced to face untold horror, a savagely bloodthirsty wolf that had killed innocent lambs, and instead we find they met a now toothless and tame old wolf who now passes for a vegetarian. It's a bit funny in a tragic way, I couldn't but shake my head at how naïve and sheltered the people were, I could expect that level of naïveté from the high school students given their age, but the adults? Prosperity, little knowledge of the world, and never having met the Nazis in action will do that, you expect them to be the monsters of the news and history books, but they're your kindly neighbour who's never got so much as a traffic infraction ticket.
I also didn't like certain errors in this book nor the strange framing of certain things, like that passage in which one of Kulle's colleagues makes a mental note that it was weird that Kulle would admire "Hitler's favourite" boxer Max Schmeling when talking about another boxing match in which Kulle was rooting for a black boxer. How is Schmeling being admired by Hitler relevant exactly given that he wasn't a Nazi? And also, why avoid the exact translation of "Muselmänner" and say "walking dead" instead? It's a pejorative term used in the camps for a reason, and if you want to teach your students the true history of the Holocaust, include this ugliness too. It's Nazism we're dealing with here, it's racist and ugly, no way to sugarcoat it through kinder (mis)translations.
I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The author says that this started as a high school History lesson that he decided to prepare due to his concerns about the rise of antisemitism and that the memory of the Holocaust was washing away with the passage of time, but that due to the inquisitiveness of his students, the History lesson evolved into a full-blown book aimed at giving as best an answer he could to the students' tonne of questions, more so when he dug up the true story of how a Nazi had not just found refuge in their comfortable suburb of Chicago but had worked in the very same school, a prestigious one in the area, where Soffer taught.
The intent I applaud, and I think the book is intended mainly for that audience (high school students) based on the basic information it provides and the tone of the book, and for teachers that would like to discuss WWII and the Holocaust in class. Maybe also for the readership without much familiarity with this topic.
But definitely not for more advanced learners of History. I found it basic, and thought it didn't provide any new insights as I had hoped. I had been hoping for insights into how come a SS-man had integrated so well in America and what the people living in his same suburb thought after he was discovered, and whilst there was definitely that, it was also predictable and not really unusual. I've known other similar stories of "Nazis amongst us" and the public's reaction. I still distinctly recall the interview to Klaus Barbie's housemaid, for example. And I learnt more from those that from this book.
The reason that kept me from appreciating this book more? Mainly the digressions and the WWII history speed-run lesson Soffer crams into this. The history brush-up might be fine for his students, but someone like me would already know and even the lay readership can learn the same with a quick search online. It's boring, dull, and often exasperating. I already know that, why are you telling me this? I want to hear about Kulle, not get a CliffNotes rundown of history, and please no more weird remarks that only digress and don't add to the topic at hand. That's was my main problem.
Another thing is that the subject of the book, SS-Unterscharführer Reinhold Kulle is . . . terribly and unutterably boring, capital B. He wasn't particularly remarkable in any way whatsoever, neither for battlefront deeds with his SS-unit nor for his cruelty at the camp. He wasn't even at one of the infamous concentration or extermination camps but at a slave labour one, and did mostly perimeter guard duty and outside duty, and wasn't known by prisoners to have been any worse than the rest of camp personnel. Like many SS-guards, he got assigned camp duty whilst recovering from a battle wound, too. In sum, nothing remarkable about him, good or bad. Not even his pre-war backstory is anything but bland: typical Weimar-era German child growing up in a hard-pressed country family, gets indoctrinated by the usual youth groups, joins the NSDAP and later the SS looking for a future and a livelihood, etc. A through and through good little cog in a gigantic murder machine.
An ordinary man, indeed, in the Christopher Browning's book sense. But Browning was not just insightful but got you interested in the topic of the cogs in the machine; he was thought-provoking.
And how did this boring little cog end up in America? Simple: by lying about his SS past and omitting key information in his US Consulate visa interview, the same way lots of criminals and fugitives have entered the US and still do. Nothing innovative or unusual about it, Kulle had lied about his wartime service, wasn't caught in Germany, lied to the US Consul, and committed immigration fraud this way. In America, he got helped by relatives, got a well-paying job as janitor in an enormous high school, had a nice home, raised his children as Americans. Very typical overall.
Even the way he got caught is typical: too late, many decades later, when all the big fish were gone and only small fish were left for a mostly pat-in-the-back spree of trials so a few could feel better about past denazification failures. Cogs like Kulle were denounced, some got tried and sent back to Germany, some were tried in Germany itself, like Demjanjuk, and some weren't tried even in Germany. In Kulle's case, he was caught in 1982, tried sometime later in the US for the immigration fraud case (not for his Nazi past, that corresponded to German jurisdiction), deported to his country, and lived there free until he died in 2006, because his own country wouldn't try him for his past. The End.
Meh. Another tale of failure of justice as old as WWII. And I'm supposed to find this interesting somehow? Well, I don't. I was bored out of my mind. Bored by the digressions, bored, bored, bored. The only flashes of interest for me were when the book talked about Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan, the SS-Helferin that was a guard at Majdanek and infamous as such. Far more interesting personage than Kulle, and who also immigrated to the US, integrated into society, married, and got caught and tried. If the book had Braunsteiner-Ryan as resident Nazi to an American suburb, I'd have been vastly more invested. And not only because she is by herself interesting as a case study for this topic but also because the SS-women are so little written about even now. Just think of how long it took for a biography of the highest-ranking female SS to be published compared to books about SS-Guard #24567 from Camp Whatisitsname.
The part about the suburbanites' reaction to Kulle's trial wasn't much enlightening to me, either. Again, it was the expected range of disagreements from those who wanted Kulle to be forgiven as it'd been decades and he was "good" now to those who wanted him tried and punished, preferably deported. No surprises here. The people who knew Kulle the most were the ones more inclined to be forgiving, or at the very least describe him in good terms, as opposed to the activists and the Jewish community. Were we supposed to expect anything different? The "encounter with evil" line in the title makes it sound as if the suburb was forced to face untold horror, a savagely bloodthirsty wolf that had killed innocent lambs, and instead we find they met a now toothless and tame old wolf who now passes for a vegetarian. It's a bit funny in a tragic way, I couldn't but shake my head at how naïve and sheltered the people were, I could expect that level of naïveté from the high school students given their age, but the adults? Prosperity, little knowledge of the world, and never having met the Nazis in action will do that, you expect them to be the monsters of the news and history books, but they're your kindly neighbour who's never got so much as a traffic infraction ticket.
I also didn't like certain errors in this book nor the strange framing of certain things, like that passage in which one of Kulle's colleagues makes a mental note that it was weird that Kulle would admire "Hitler's favourite" boxer Max Schmeling when talking about another boxing match in which Kulle was rooting for a black boxer. How is Schmeling being admired by Hitler relevant exactly given that he wasn't a Nazi? And also, why avoid the exact translation of "Muselmänner" and say "walking dead" instead? It's a pejorative term used in the camps for a reason, and if you want to teach your students the true history of the Holocaust, include this ugliness too. It's Nazism we're dealing with here, it's racist and ugly, no way to sugarcoat it through kinder (mis)translations.
I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
December 14, 2025
I decided to give Michael Soffer's book 5/5 stars. It's actually an incredible story--a German SS soldier not only gains admittance to the US as a refugee but gets a job as a janitor in a public high school. Furthermore, the high school is Oak Park-River Forest High School, located in a suburb of Chicago known for its liberalism. This book is of great interest to me as I was a student there ( Class of 1970) and this was while Reinhold Kulle worked there. However, he was there mainly after school let out and at night, so I don't think I ever even saw him.
Soffer did a great deal of research, including interviews, and I think he did just an incredible job. For me the most interesting aspect of the book was the reaction in the community to the Kulle affair ( as it developed in the 1980s). Many people rose to defend a war criminal because they saw Kulle as a kind and helpful neighbor and a mainstay of the high school and community.
5 STARS for an outstanding job of reporting in this book ( published in 2024) covering some fascinating local history, which was personal for me, as it involved my high school and the community I grew up in.
Soffer did a great deal of research, including interviews, and I think he did just an incredible job. For me the most interesting aspect of the book was the reaction in the community to the Kulle affair ( as it developed in the 1980s). Many people rose to defend a war criminal because they saw Kulle as a kind and helpful neighbor and a mainstay of the high school and community.
5 STARS for an outstanding job of reporting in this book ( published in 2024) covering some fascinating local history, which was personal for me, as it involved my high school and the community I grew up in.
April 21, 2025
so interesting. I was very fascinated - particularly that so much of what this book covers takes places in a few block radius of where I live.
April 2, 2024
I am very grateful to UChicago Press and NetGalley for allowing me to access a digital copy before the book is published. Before I offer my honest review, I wonder what the intended audience is for this book. As someone with an academic background in German history, I skimmed through the first few chapters which outlined Reinhold Kulle’s life in Europe before emigration to America. My years spent in Chicago also allowed me to appreciate the Chicago vignettes of and references to different neighborhoods. My background and experience meant that before I picked up the book, I was already invested in the story, both as a historical-biographical account and one understood through a microhistory lens.
As much as this book is about a Nazi’s immigration to, integration in, and eventually, deportation from the United States, it is also inherently and intimately a story about American suburban life. The central theme I pondered throughout, to which the book provided an answer for, centers around empathy. How much empathy can we show Kulle? How, and if, can we distinguish individual agency from the grand scheme of inhumanity? And how much can criminal justice account for political violence? How to recognize and reconcile the definitiveness and volatility in the victim-perpetrator paradigm? By putting them on trial, are we actually “bringing Nazis to justice” or eliding the political accountability by focusing on the individual?
For the most part, I could extend radical empathy to Kulle and his longing for home, especially on his account that the Germany before and after the war made his definition and reminiscence of home difficult, and even impossible. I was hugely engrossed by Kulle’s testimony at the trial and his subsequent appearance at the school board meeting, which, upon hearing that his only regret was the fact that Germany did not win the war, my opinion of him cannot help but sway.
There are other works out there that discuss to what extent individual Nazis should be held accountable for the crimes of the Third Reich, but Our Nazi by Michael Soffer, at least what I found the most interesting, discusses Kulle’s life in Chicago, a place where he had established another life for many decades. In particular, the community reaction to the Kulle case illuminates all perspectives on the spectrum, from total forgiveness and acceptance to advocacy for complete ostracization and immediate deportation.
On a very personal level, Michael Soffer has inspired my confidence in a career as a high school history teacher, which has been his position at the Oak Park and River Forest High School for almost two decades. Besides, his acknowledgement section is just so sweet. It makes me so happy for him for publishing this work!
As much as this book is about a Nazi’s immigration to, integration in, and eventually, deportation from the United States, it is also inherently and intimately a story about American suburban life. The central theme I pondered throughout, to which the book provided an answer for, centers around empathy. How much empathy can we show Kulle? How, and if, can we distinguish individual agency from the grand scheme of inhumanity? And how much can criminal justice account for political violence? How to recognize and reconcile the definitiveness and volatility in the victim-perpetrator paradigm? By putting them on trial, are we actually “bringing Nazis to justice” or eliding the political accountability by focusing on the individual?
For the most part, I could extend radical empathy to Kulle and his longing for home, especially on his account that the Germany before and after the war made his definition and reminiscence of home difficult, and even impossible. I was hugely engrossed by Kulle’s testimony at the trial and his subsequent appearance at the school board meeting, which, upon hearing that his only regret was the fact that Germany did not win the war, my opinion of him cannot help but sway.
There are other works out there that discuss to what extent individual Nazis should be held accountable for the crimes of the Third Reich, but Our Nazi by Michael Soffer, at least what I found the most interesting, discusses Kulle’s life in Chicago, a place where he had established another life for many decades. In particular, the community reaction to the Kulle case illuminates all perspectives on the spectrum, from total forgiveness and acceptance to advocacy for complete ostracization and immediate deportation.
On a very personal level, Michael Soffer has inspired my confidence in a career as a high school history teacher, which has been his position at the Oak Park and River Forest High School for almost two decades. Besides, his acknowledgement section is just so sweet. It makes me so happy for him for publishing this work!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 10, 2025
Where do you even begin with a book like this? First, it’s a near must read for anyone in Chicagoland and who is otherwise interested in the moral and behavioral parallels between what goes on in the period covered by this book and what’s going on in today’s world. The book is a quagmire of moral, legal, and “what would you do” quandaries. There are three distinct groups that emerged in relation to the man in question, Kulle. There’s the group of people who remember the Holocaust and the horrors therein, including those who survived not only the Holocaust but also the camp Kulle guarded in his twenties. There’s the group of people who knew Kulle only as the 25-year veteran janitor of the high school he currently served outside Chicago, and who viewed him as a pillar of the community. Finally, there’s the neo-nazis who deny the holocaust happened (despite Kulle himself admitting he was a Nazi guard at a concentration camp) and who therefore defend Kulle on that ground. Parts of the book tried my morals, parts made me despair and drew clear parallels to today, yet mostly the book made me wonder, “What would I do with this new information?” Ultimately, the book exposed Kulle to be untrustworthy in his description of his participation in the Nazi party at best and, at worst, still a cold, calculating, and deceitful person despite the time elapsed and his established reputation as a kind and helpful man. Living myself just a stone’s throw away from Oak Park and having been born in the decade Kulle’s trial by judge and community took place made this book all the more meaningful for me. A must-read for anyone paying attention to today’s fertile landscape of growing hatred for the other and excusal of poor behavior.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the author did a terrific job of moving through time and context. The primary source citations at the end take up nearly the last 20-25% of the book. It truly must have been a passion project, and the final product should stand the test of time.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the author did a terrific job of moving through time and context. The primary source citations at the end take up nearly the last 20-25% of the book. It truly must have been a passion project, and the final product should stand the test of time.
October 27, 2024
Incredibly well written and detailed history of a story so close to home. I had no idea about this Chicagoland trial that had communities (Oak Park / River Forest and Jewish) wrestling with a seemingly clear ethical responsibility. And yet, we see the washing of religious, political, and indigenous narratives happening still today that mirror portions of this book so eerily similarly in a deeply concerning way. I would recommend this book to anyone...period!
May 14, 2025
Meticulously researched, clearly and objectively written.
November 2, 2024
This is such an engaging and chilling book. So well written and more relevant that ever.
December 23, 2024
An update: readers should be aware of the antisemitism imbroglio afflicting the Oak Park-River Forest High School, the setting of the book and its author's former workplace. A disproportionately-loud chorus of outraged squealing alerted us to a revival of the Third Reich: support for a student group endorsing ceasefire and selling t-shirts labeling an outline of Israel with its former designtion of "Palestine," which, via invisible dye, we hear, calls for the genocide of Israelis, and sports as well an olive tree, a symbol of peace (Arabic slang for slaughter); a teacher's personal tweets; and an invited online lecture during which a Columbia history professor shared his understanding of the current conflicts. (He then appeared for an in-person event, where fortunately he seemed to have forgotten to bring along his bus-bombing gear.) The self-imagined Nuremberg Trials judges are pressuring the state not simply to fire but to disbar three teachers, leaving them unable to teach in Illinois public schools. One of the teachers targeted - the poster of tweets promulgating need for a Babi Yar v.2 - has resigned. Meanwhile, two members of the proud Zionist corps are running for spots on the school board as they fight to have two other candidates kicked out of the race for paperwork errors. An unsurprising move, since both cosplay Mossad militants are lawyers, well-practiced in spotting meaningless bureaucratic mistakes.
OPRFHS has caved in somewhat and brought on board a DC-based diversity consulting nonprofit at the tax-funded cost of $29.4k - a mere estimate, not including travel and lodging, and low enough to be passed without need of the school board's approval. (Presumably deliberate.) Yet the book's author, no doubt involved in the anti-Nazi partisan struggle, has fled the school.
No historian can claim a purely objective approach, but readers should take note that the book took shape in an institution which apparently still reeks of Nazis - not of ghostly Kulle alone but his living heirs, now hailing from certain nations and ethnicities, who, we have been informed ever more stridently, crave the taste of Jewish blood and plant sleeper agents in schools. The book refuses to state this connection, so one hopes that readers will keep its context in mind as well as consider its potential as a classroom text. How Kulle's behavior on the borders of Gross-Rosen, for instance, could be compared to the brutality of IDF border guards stationed at Gaza and its neighbors before and during the present war - justified by an incessant invocation of the Shoah - might be discussed. Perhaps the issue can be thoroughly probed in the author's next "Holocaust Studies" course. Certainly these are conversations no other teacher, rightfully in fear of being booted from the profession, can bring up.
-------------
"Our Nazi" is a compelling work. It earns 5 stars, not as an assessment of its own quality but as praise for its usefulness as a primary text to be read alongside studies of how US perceptions of antisemitism and the Holocaust have changed over the past 40 years and what contemporary purposes they serve.
Tracking the fate of the high-school janitor Reinhold Kulle, discovered in the early 1980s to have been a Nazi concentration-camp guard, the book puts a simple, emotional conflict at its center. One side, the good side, consists of a spirit of timeless righteousness aiming to banish a wicked man, a project driven by primal Jewish instincts shared with flawlessly-menschian lawyers galloping in, their armor glistening; the opposite side – ignorant of Holocaust atrocities, oversentimental, or antisemitic – argues for his forgiveness.
Many factors are left out. For instance, Oak Park’s voter majority begin to favor Democratic over GOP presidential candidates no earlier than 1984, and by a hairsbreadth. As the Oak Park-River Forest Museum tells us online, “the Democrat Walter Mondale actually carried Oak Park by 50.3% to 49.7% for Reagan.” Meanwhile, “River Forest voted 77.5% for Reagan and 27.2% for Mondale.” Neither town was a progressive bastion. The book’s declaration that they were “no longer a conservative community” by then seems misplaced. Questions concerning political affinities appear to have been scratched off the oral-history interview list. Likewise, outside of school and courthouse, little attention is paid to Oak Parkers' various hometowns, education, occupation, income, or gentile religion; all succumb to the neatly-drawn Jew vs. non-Jew binary.
The book is shocked and outraged to discover that Kulle continued to receive his pension even after being sent off to Germany. This generosity was apparently “shrouded in secrecy.” Yet the Office of Special Investigations – a controversial Justice Department division formed in 1979 to give once-Nazi US residents the boot – had a policy of maintaining public and private US pensions as a means of persuading ex-Nazis to leave and enticing unenthusiastic nations to house them. As an Associated Press study, published in 2014, quotes, “We really did want people to give up and go,” an approach confessed by “a senior Justice Department official, who defended the practice as a way of avoiding deportation proceedings that could last as long as 10 years.” Kulle spent three years filing appeals; surely, over that span, the OSI was eager to look the other way as his retirement money became guaranteed, in hopes that he would just get the hell out of the US on his own without emptying public coffers and further sullying the department’s reputation.
An upstanding example, Kulle was represented by two lawyers who were regular foes of the OSI – but only in court. Per the book, they worked closely with the school and state insurers to secure his benefits. This cooperation was neither conspiratorial nor exceptional; it induced no indignation or interference from the Office, which one can presume was left grateful. The strategy was deployed so consistently that, in 1988, Congress passed legislation banning Social Security checks from reaching deported ex-Nazis. The effort proved unsuccessful, since in 1999 a similar ban was proposed and then promptly shot down with the assistance of the OSI itself. (See the AP study.)
Accordingly, the book does not discuss an instance from 1993, when a German Consul official informed the OSI that Germany was reluctant to accept a particular deportee lest he became a “ward of the state.” Thankfully, the “OSI assured them that he was the recipient of a sufficient pension from the Crackerjack company, his long-time US employer.” The enduring popularity of caramel-coated peanuts and popcorn, it seems, could play a key role in persuading Germany to lodge a former Treblinka guard.
The exchange is recounted in a footnote placed within a draft of a celebratory OSI history: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default...
“Our Nazi” alludes only once to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. A pastor asserts, unveiling himself as a “bold” anti-semite, that its brutality had rendered the Holocaust “no longer pure.” “No longer withheld from rationalizing Israeli attacks” might have been a closer approximation of what was said, but sources are one-sided; they are oral histories collected around 35 years later and lack the pastor’s take on the dialogue. The exclusion of any information about his background is disappointing, especially since, leaning left – “recognized for his long history of working for such causes as the peace movement, civil rights for the incarcerated and housing reform,” an online profile says, along with “actively support[ing] legislation on such issues as employment, food stamps, welfare, abortion and the rights of homosexuals” – he spent time studying at the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago, a labor-organization center begun by Saul Alinsky, a Jew.
Astonishingly, the book describes the invasion as a “bloody skirmish,” as if two prepubescent boys had engaged in a playground fight and ended up with identical scabs on their knees. Definitions of the term include “light,” “minor,” “small,” “brief.” At least 17,000 non-Israelis died in that little “skirmish,” most of them civilians, while Israel is said by some to have lost 376 soldiers (out of the 40,000 sent in). Afterward, the two Beirut massacres – a standard designation – would continue to kill, with estimates ranging from 1,500 to 3,500 or more people over three days, again almost entirely civilian, as they sat in their homes or a refugee camp. Israel then occupied southern Lebanon until 2000. Readers can debate connections between the expansion of Israeli military strength, its leaders’ references to Holocaust atrocities, and US citizens’ points of view regarding Nazi-hunting, but labeling a series of war crimes a “skirmish” should be avoided.
(As I type this, the “skirmish” has been revived, as it was in 2006. Well more than 3000 Lebanese have been killed in Israeli airstrikes over the past six weeks.)
Not unrelated is the book’s most critical omission: the late 20th-century blossoming of strategies for US power – both domestic and geo-political – based on intensifying claims of Jewish victimization. The OSI, of which the book features a hagiographic history, reflected this shift. Neal Sher’s departure from OSI in 1994, for example, after 14 years at its head to executive directorship of AIPAC, by then one of the strongest lobbying groups in the US as it sought to build up Israel’s military force, provides solid testimony. OSI agents starring in the book and serving among its interviewees have expressed similar leanings. One has recently stated his belief that Hamas “offers a credible threat of genocide,” when 35,000 Palestinians lay dead – now around 45,000 – and thousands upon thousands more were missing, wounded, disabled, homeless, sick, malnourished, orphaned. His former colleague, proclaiming himself “an ardent Zionist,” endorses “sensible, safe, and secure” Israeli borders, presumably so that Palestinians cannot leave, are deprived of aid, half of their hospitals destroyed, the rest left barely manned or supplied. The checkpoints boast armed guards, shooting with impunity and waving through not only armored vehicles but trucks packed with uncharged “detainees” and destined for “security grounds” notorious for torture, rapes, and ruthless beatings. Such guards are, without doubt, the Kulles of justice.
The book shares these convictions, for the most part implicitly. (In measured, putatively objective tones, the epilogue relates that, following a local newspaper's article about Kulle in 2012, readers left comments online professing their affection for him. Will there emerge from Reddit another Volksgemeinschaft? Time will tell.) This is a clumsy move, since tiptoeing around the current context only draws attention to it.
Today, Oak Park offers a particularly galvanizing environment. Letters to local media and parents’ complaints drive home the fact that antisemitism grows more rising, rampant, raging, or roiling by the hour. Their hysterical pitch is warranted. We – rechristened “Judensaue” at most dinner-table and office water-cooler conversations in town – must recognize that a revived Reich looms: one slip might send us tumbling into another Shoah. Living in perpetual fear, as we should, we line our kippas with Kevlar, as we are soon to be herded into the Chicago-’burbs version of the Lodz ghetto.
The Oak Park-River Forest high school remains a place of special risk, its hallways smelling faintly of Zyklon-B. A 14-year-old sending swastikas to phones during an assembly will trigger a pogrom; antisemitic scrawls in bathrooms will raise top-brass Nazis from the dead and introduce them to today’s Hamas leadership, hosting a cocktail party where they can mingle. More recently, breaking six years of disciplined silence from the school’s Mein Kampf-reciting faction, a teacher’s personal tweets and the willingness of another to sponsor a group advocating ceasefire have merited neo-Nuremberg trials. Weapons caches plastered with Hitler Youth stickers can be found in tunnels constructed beneath the football field. Jews of any age who oppose US-financed Israeli domination are suicidal, welcoming Kristallnacht reproductions to be held downtown as fun holiday events and hailing the erection of concentration camps in forest preserves as providing affordable family vacation spots. It’s no wonder that, bearing witness, the town’s teachers born to the tribe feel an itch to flee, defiantly ripping yellow stars from their tattered garments as they sprint toward Exodus-branded ships that will aliyah them over to safe(r) territories.
In trying to convince readers that such scenes lie just around the corner, “Our Nazi” reinforces justifications backing the present middle-eastern war. Enthusiasts of the latter conjure up a permanent community of True Jews, their yiddishkeit marching in lockstep: a group remaining eternally alert, always scanning the earth in pursuit of an endlessly-looming future Holocaust. Inevitably, it argues, Jews will face genocide once again and so now must keep their hands unafraid to push the bomb button, or turn the tank ignition, or squeeze the trigger. These weapons are courtesy of the US government, rerouting money desperately needed by public education. In other words, thanks to its portrayal of Jews as a threatened, marginalized group, as vulnerable to destruction as we were in Europe eighty years ago, the book shows us one ideological reason why the US supports Israel – with any criticism amounting to vicious antisemitism – and funds its determination to blow Gaza and its neighbors to bits.
OPRFHS has caved in somewhat and brought on board a DC-based diversity consulting nonprofit at the tax-funded cost of $29.4k - a mere estimate, not including travel and lodging, and low enough to be passed without need of the school board's approval. (Presumably deliberate.) Yet the book's author, no doubt involved in the anti-Nazi partisan struggle, has fled the school.
No historian can claim a purely objective approach, but readers should take note that the book took shape in an institution which apparently still reeks of Nazis - not of ghostly Kulle alone but his living heirs, now hailing from certain nations and ethnicities, who, we have been informed ever more stridently, crave the taste of Jewish blood and plant sleeper agents in schools. The book refuses to state this connection, so one hopes that readers will keep its context in mind as well as consider its potential as a classroom text. How Kulle's behavior on the borders of Gross-Rosen, for instance, could be compared to the brutality of IDF border guards stationed at Gaza and its neighbors before and during the present war - justified by an incessant invocation of the Shoah - might be discussed. Perhaps the issue can be thoroughly probed in the author's next "Holocaust Studies" course. Certainly these are conversations no other teacher, rightfully in fear of being booted from the profession, can bring up.
-------------
"Our Nazi" is a compelling work. It earns 5 stars, not as an assessment of its own quality but as praise for its usefulness as a primary text to be read alongside studies of how US perceptions of antisemitism and the Holocaust have changed over the past 40 years and what contemporary purposes they serve.
Tracking the fate of the high-school janitor Reinhold Kulle, discovered in the early 1980s to have been a Nazi concentration-camp guard, the book puts a simple, emotional conflict at its center. One side, the good side, consists of a spirit of timeless righteousness aiming to banish a wicked man, a project driven by primal Jewish instincts shared with flawlessly-menschian lawyers galloping in, their armor glistening; the opposite side – ignorant of Holocaust atrocities, oversentimental, or antisemitic – argues for his forgiveness.
Many factors are left out. For instance, Oak Park’s voter majority begin to favor Democratic over GOP presidential candidates no earlier than 1984, and by a hairsbreadth. As the Oak Park-River Forest Museum tells us online, “the Democrat Walter Mondale actually carried Oak Park by 50.3% to 49.7% for Reagan.” Meanwhile, “River Forest voted 77.5% for Reagan and 27.2% for Mondale.” Neither town was a progressive bastion. The book’s declaration that they were “no longer a conservative community” by then seems misplaced. Questions concerning political affinities appear to have been scratched off the oral-history interview list. Likewise, outside of school and courthouse, little attention is paid to Oak Parkers' various hometowns, education, occupation, income, or gentile religion; all succumb to the neatly-drawn Jew vs. non-Jew binary.
The book is shocked and outraged to discover that Kulle continued to receive his pension even after being sent off to Germany. This generosity was apparently “shrouded in secrecy.” Yet the Office of Special Investigations – a controversial Justice Department division formed in 1979 to give once-Nazi US residents the boot – had a policy of maintaining public and private US pensions as a means of persuading ex-Nazis to leave and enticing unenthusiastic nations to house them. As an Associated Press study, published in 2014, quotes, “We really did want people to give up and go,” an approach confessed by “a senior Justice Department official, who defended the practice as a way of avoiding deportation proceedings that could last as long as 10 years.” Kulle spent three years filing appeals; surely, over that span, the OSI was eager to look the other way as his retirement money became guaranteed, in hopes that he would just get the hell out of the US on his own without emptying public coffers and further sullying the department’s reputation.
An upstanding example, Kulle was represented by two lawyers who were regular foes of the OSI – but only in court. Per the book, they worked closely with the school and state insurers to secure his benefits. This cooperation was neither conspiratorial nor exceptional; it induced no indignation or interference from the Office, which one can presume was left grateful. The strategy was deployed so consistently that, in 1988, Congress passed legislation banning Social Security checks from reaching deported ex-Nazis. The effort proved unsuccessful, since in 1999 a similar ban was proposed and then promptly shot down with the assistance of the OSI itself. (See the AP study.)
Accordingly, the book does not discuss an instance from 1993, when a German Consul official informed the OSI that Germany was reluctant to accept a particular deportee lest he became a “ward of the state.” Thankfully, the “OSI assured them that he was the recipient of a sufficient pension from the Crackerjack company, his long-time US employer.” The enduring popularity of caramel-coated peanuts and popcorn, it seems, could play a key role in persuading Germany to lodge a former Treblinka guard.
The exchange is recounted in a footnote placed within a draft of a celebratory OSI history: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default...
“Our Nazi” alludes only once to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. A pastor asserts, unveiling himself as a “bold” anti-semite, that its brutality had rendered the Holocaust “no longer pure.” “No longer withheld from rationalizing Israeli attacks” might have been a closer approximation of what was said, but sources are one-sided; they are oral histories collected around 35 years later and lack the pastor’s take on the dialogue. The exclusion of any information about his background is disappointing, especially since, leaning left – “recognized for his long history of working for such causes as the peace movement, civil rights for the incarcerated and housing reform,” an online profile says, along with “actively support[ing] legislation on such issues as employment, food stamps, welfare, abortion and the rights of homosexuals” – he spent time studying at the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago, a labor-organization center begun by Saul Alinsky, a Jew.
Astonishingly, the book describes the invasion as a “bloody skirmish,” as if two prepubescent boys had engaged in a playground fight and ended up with identical scabs on their knees. Definitions of the term include “light,” “minor,” “small,” “brief.” At least 17,000 non-Israelis died in that little “skirmish,” most of them civilians, while Israel is said by some to have lost 376 soldiers (out of the 40,000 sent in). Afterward, the two Beirut massacres – a standard designation – would continue to kill, with estimates ranging from 1,500 to 3,500 or more people over three days, again almost entirely civilian, as they sat in their homes or a refugee camp. Israel then occupied southern Lebanon until 2000. Readers can debate connections between the expansion of Israeli military strength, its leaders’ references to Holocaust atrocities, and US citizens’ points of view regarding Nazi-hunting, but labeling a series of war crimes a “skirmish” should be avoided.
(As I type this, the “skirmish” has been revived, as it was in 2006. Well more than 3000 Lebanese have been killed in Israeli airstrikes over the past six weeks.)
Not unrelated is the book’s most critical omission: the late 20th-century blossoming of strategies for US power – both domestic and geo-political – based on intensifying claims of Jewish victimization. The OSI, of which the book features a hagiographic history, reflected this shift. Neal Sher’s departure from OSI in 1994, for example, after 14 years at its head to executive directorship of AIPAC, by then one of the strongest lobbying groups in the US as it sought to build up Israel’s military force, provides solid testimony. OSI agents starring in the book and serving among its interviewees have expressed similar leanings. One has recently stated his belief that Hamas “offers a credible threat of genocide,” when 35,000 Palestinians lay dead – now around 45,000 – and thousands upon thousands more were missing, wounded, disabled, homeless, sick, malnourished, orphaned. His former colleague, proclaiming himself “an ardent Zionist,” endorses “sensible, safe, and secure” Israeli borders, presumably so that Palestinians cannot leave, are deprived of aid, half of their hospitals destroyed, the rest left barely manned or supplied. The checkpoints boast armed guards, shooting with impunity and waving through not only armored vehicles but trucks packed with uncharged “detainees” and destined for “security grounds” notorious for torture, rapes, and ruthless beatings. Such guards are, without doubt, the Kulles of justice.
The book shares these convictions, for the most part implicitly. (In measured, putatively objective tones, the epilogue relates that, following a local newspaper's article about Kulle in 2012, readers left comments online professing their affection for him. Will there emerge from Reddit another Volksgemeinschaft? Time will tell.) This is a clumsy move, since tiptoeing around the current context only draws attention to it.
Today, Oak Park offers a particularly galvanizing environment. Letters to local media and parents’ complaints drive home the fact that antisemitism grows more rising, rampant, raging, or roiling by the hour. Their hysterical pitch is warranted. We – rechristened “Judensaue” at most dinner-table and office water-cooler conversations in town – must recognize that a revived Reich looms: one slip might send us tumbling into another Shoah. Living in perpetual fear, as we should, we line our kippas with Kevlar, as we are soon to be herded into the Chicago-’burbs version of the Lodz ghetto.
The Oak Park-River Forest high school remains a place of special risk, its hallways smelling faintly of Zyklon-B. A 14-year-old sending swastikas to phones during an assembly will trigger a pogrom; antisemitic scrawls in bathrooms will raise top-brass Nazis from the dead and introduce them to today’s Hamas leadership, hosting a cocktail party where they can mingle. More recently, breaking six years of disciplined silence from the school’s Mein Kampf-reciting faction, a teacher’s personal tweets and the willingness of another to sponsor a group advocating ceasefire have merited neo-Nuremberg trials. Weapons caches plastered with Hitler Youth stickers can be found in tunnels constructed beneath the football field. Jews of any age who oppose US-financed Israeli domination are suicidal, welcoming Kristallnacht reproductions to be held downtown as fun holiday events and hailing the erection of concentration camps in forest preserves as providing affordable family vacation spots. It’s no wonder that, bearing witness, the town’s teachers born to the tribe feel an itch to flee, defiantly ripping yellow stars from their tattered garments as they sprint toward Exodus-branded ships that will aliyah them over to safe(r) territories.
In trying to convince readers that such scenes lie just around the corner, “Our Nazi” reinforces justifications backing the present middle-eastern war. Enthusiasts of the latter conjure up a permanent community of True Jews, their yiddishkeit marching in lockstep: a group remaining eternally alert, always scanning the earth in pursuit of an endlessly-looming future Holocaust. Inevitably, it argues, Jews will face genocide once again and so now must keep their hands unafraid to push the bomb button, or turn the tank ignition, or squeeze the trigger. These weapons are courtesy of the US government, rerouting money desperately needed by public education. In other words, thanks to its portrayal of Jews as a threatened, marginalized group, as vulnerable to destruction as we were in Europe eighty years ago, the book shows us one ideological reason why the US supports Israel – with any criticism amounting to vicious antisemitism – and funds its determination to blow Gaza and its neighbors to bits.
May 8, 2025
Whew what a story! All true and while this was serious, factual non-fiction it didn’t read like a textbook, it wasn’t dry or bland but was very engaging and readable even when it got into heavier law speak.
Kulle was a Nazi, part of the SS who had served as a concentration camp guard. Sounds like a bad guy, huh? And in the 1940s he certainly was. But this book was set in the 80s and Kulle was now a loving grandfather who had been living in the US for almost all of his children’s’ lives, working as a school custodian, caring for his family and the community at large. A fine, upstanding citizen beloved by all, but one with a very dark past. Although the book does not take sides, it is actually difficult to not be on the side of Kulle - I know, a literal Nazi! But what of personal redemption and rehabilitation? Can people not change? He was a young German lad in the 1930s and 40s, serving his country, and we all know that Germany was at that time a difficult country not to serve. People were too scared to stand against Hitler, and people were also brainwashed, doing what they might have believed was right in order to dig their country out of the hole the Great War had stuck it in. He was also a front line soldier who was wounded severely and got sent to be a camp guard, and he was promised a farm after the war for his duty.
By all accounts too Kulle led an unprejudiced life in the USA, acting neither racist nor antisemitic towards anyone. He is not described as evil, he is not Himmler or Mengele, he was just a non-descript cog in the wheel hoping to better his own life.
It was such a moral and ethical dilemma to read this book! It did honestly feel like a witch hunt and it’s hard to believe that one would actually want the Nazi to “win”. I want to know too what happened to his wife and children and grandchildren when he was finally deported too - back to a country that he hadn’t lived in for forty or so years. That’s a lot of a life to upheave.
Kulle was a Nazi, part of the SS who had served as a concentration camp guard. Sounds like a bad guy, huh? And in the 1940s he certainly was. But this book was set in the 80s and Kulle was now a loving grandfather who had been living in the US for almost all of his children’s’ lives, working as a school custodian, caring for his family and the community at large. A fine, upstanding citizen beloved by all, but one with a very dark past. Although the book does not take sides, it is actually difficult to not be on the side of Kulle - I know, a literal Nazi! But what of personal redemption and rehabilitation? Can people not change? He was a young German lad in the 1930s and 40s, serving his country, and we all know that Germany was at that time a difficult country not to serve. People were too scared to stand against Hitler, and people were also brainwashed, doing what they might have believed was right in order to dig their country out of the hole the Great War had stuck it in. He was also a front line soldier who was wounded severely and got sent to be a camp guard, and he was promised a farm after the war for his duty.
By all accounts too Kulle led an unprejudiced life in the USA, acting neither racist nor antisemitic towards anyone. He is not described as evil, he is not Himmler or Mengele, he was just a non-descript cog in the wheel hoping to better his own life.
It was such a moral and ethical dilemma to read this book! It did honestly feel like a witch hunt and it’s hard to believe that one would actually want the Nazi to “win”. I want to know too what happened to his wife and children and grandchildren when he was finally deported too - back to a country that he hadn’t lived in for forty or so years. That’s a lot of a life to upheave.
July 4, 2025
This is the true story of Oak Park and River Forest High School's senior custodian who was once a Nazi and a member of the SS guard at the Gross-Rosen labor camp in WW2. Reinhold Kulle lied on his US visa request in 1957 and later became a near perfect school employee. Oak Park, known for its liberalism, defended their employee until they couldn't. In 2012, a history teacher gave an assignment and one student researched how this injustice happened.
September 6, 2024
Our Nazi by Michael Soffer is a heart crushing and infuriating true story about (in)justice, humanity and deception. A former decorated SS Nazi illegally immigrated to Chicago from what was then East Germany, got a respectable job and made a life amongst his neighbours and community. They would never in a million years have dreamed he had been a barbaric Nazi who rose through the ranks, not by force but with ambition and pride.
Reinhold Kulle put his past as a Nazi camp guard at Gross-Rosen where Nazis were rewarded for each murder behind him and obtained a respectable job in a school in Chicago as chief custodian who cared about the security of the students. As an East German "refugee", his life was above reproach, he worked hard and was kind. When his history came to light, most didn't believe it or shrugged it off. The Holocaust was years ago, after all. Many actually felt misplaced empathy for him rather than for traumatized victims who testified against him. How despicable to learn of the fundraiser!
Like other war criminals, he had both enemies and allies. Also like others, Kulle got away with horrific actions. Tragically, of the estimated million Nazi participants, very few were brought to justice, and rarely paid seriously. That fact burned in my heart as I read this tragic story.
Our Nazi is extremely powerful and emotive. Kulle and his wife sought and obtained proof they were Aryan and therefore supreme. Life in America seemed to be satisfactory for them and those around them. The millions of lives lost and dramatically altered forever at the behest of the likes of Reinhold cannot be forgotten. Ever. Books such as this should be mandatory reading, lest we forget.
My sincere thank you to University of Chicago Press and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this powerful and captivating book.
Reinhold Kulle put his past as a Nazi camp guard at Gross-Rosen where Nazis were rewarded for each murder behind him and obtained a respectable job in a school in Chicago as chief custodian who cared about the security of the students. As an East German "refugee", his life was above reproach, he worked hard and was kind. When his history came to light, most didn't believe it or shrugged it off. The Holocaust was years ago, after all. Many actually felt misplaced empathy for him rather than for traumatized victims who testified against him. How despicable to learn of the fundraiser!
Like other war criminals, he had both enemies and allies. Also like others, Kulle got away with horrific actions. Tragically, of the estimated million Nazi participants, very few were brought to justice, and rarely paid seriously. That fact burned in my heart as I read this tragic story.
Our Nazi is extremely powerful and emotive. Kulle and his wife sought and obtained proof they were Aryan and therefore supreme. Life in America seemed to be satisfactory for them and those around them. The millions of lives lost and dramatically altered forever at the behest of the likes of Reinhold cannot be forgotten. Ever. Books such as this should be mandatory reading, lest we forget.
My sincere thank you to University of Chicago Press and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this powerful and captivating book.
October 5, 2024
What would you do if you found out your close friend or colleague was in the SS? Not just a conscripted soldier, most German men had no choice; but a soldier who fought to get into the killing branch of the SS. I know what I would do but even in these times I was still amazed to read how easily so many people could forget and push aside horrors that had happened less than 40 years prior.
I only read a few non fiction books each year (that aren’t business related). If I finish them it usually takes me weeks. I read Our Nazi in 24 hours! It’s the fastest paced non fiction book I’ve ever read. It starts with the subjects upbringing and his path to joining the SS. This is not a history book of the Holocaust although it does include some facts to provide the setting for the rest of the story. It is primarily the story of one nazi who built a family and a life in a suburb of Illinois while working at Oak Park River Forest High School for over 20 years. It also provides information about other nazi’s living around the US, beyond those involved with Project Paperclip. This is a very well written book that I highly recommend.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an early release in exchange for a fair and honest review.
I only read a few non fiction books each year (that aren’t business related). If I finish them it usually takes me weeks. I read Our Nazi in 24 hours! It’s the fastest paced non fiction book I’ve ever read. It starts with the subjects upbringing and his path to joining the SS. This is not a history book of the Holocaust although it does include some facts to provide the setting for the rest of the story. It is primarily the story of one nazi who built a family and a life in a suburb of Illinois while working at Oak Park River Forest High School for over 20 years. It also provides information about other nazi’s living around the US, beyond those involved with Project Paperclip. This is a very well written book that I highly recommend.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an early release in exchange for a fair and honest review.
May 4, 2024
Our Nazi: An American Suburb’s Encounter with Evil describes the life of Kulle, an SS soldier. It begins with his life in the Hitler Youth, moving onto his time working in concentration camp, then his escape to America where he, his wife and child became American citizens where nobody knew of his cruel history. When his past becomes public knowledge and a trial begins, the reactions of the people are disturbingly unexpected.
Our Nazi is written fairly comprehensively and the pace is fast, making for easy reading. It started out as a high school history lesson and, as the students became more interested in the story, it developed into the book it is now. It is not an incredibly detailed historical book but it does well to explain the series of events, their start points and their impacts, in an easily understandable manner.
Our Nazi is written fairly comprehensively and the pace is fast, making for easy reading. It started out as a high school history lesson and, as the students became more interested in the story, it developed into the book it is now. It is not an incredibly detailed historical book but it does well to explain the series of events, their start points and their impacts, in an easily understandable manner.
February 16, 2025
Well researched and told story of 1 town, but can happen anywhere!
I am struggling to find the words for how much I enjoyed reading this thorough and honest work from Michael Soffer. A look at a town that still tries to uphold its inclusive practices but often puts Jews to the side. "Our Nazi" is a must read for any Chicagoan who is unsure of what has historically occurred in our town. While also should be a must read to all people to understand the climate occurring now across the world. This book took a deep dive into one towns divide but opened up the realities that we are facing now.
Well written and highly researched you can tell Mr. Soffer put his passion for knowledge and educating to pen.
I am struggling to find the words for how much I enjoyed reading this thorough and honest work from Michael Soffer. A look at a town that still tries to uphold its inclusive practices but often puts Jews to the side. "Our Nazi" is a must read for any Chicagoan who is unsure of what has historically occurred in our town. While also should be a must read to all people to understand the climate occurring now across the world. This book took a deep dive into one towns divide but opened up the realities that we are facing now.
Well written and highly researched you can tell Mr. Soffer put his passion for knowledge and educating to pen.
June 12, 2025
Wonderful, extremely well researched and engaging book. Evidently 10,000+ Nazis came to the US in the late 1940s-50s, mostly by just omitting their Nazi service from their visa applications. This is the incredibly interesting story of one former SS guard who ended up as the head custodian (for 20+ years) at my town’s high school.
June 29, 2024
Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for an advanced reader copy in return for my honest review.
I have had a passion for learning about the holocaust since taking a high school course in it decades ago. I would recommend this book specifically for those in that age range or those just beginning to learn about the horrific events.
This book takes a look at the possibility and reality of monsters living among us and the aftermath of the knowledge.
I have had a passion for learning about the holocaust since taking a high school course in it decades ago. I would recommend this book specifically for those in that age range or those just beginning to learn about the horrific events.
This book takes a look at the possibility and reality of monsters living among us and the aftermath of the knowledge.
October 20, 2024
Our Nazi is the story of Reinhold Kulle working at a suburban Chicago high school years after his time in the SS, and it is also the story of a community dealing with uncomfortable truths. This book was impeccably researched and completely readable by a non-scholar. Kudos to Michael Soffer for being inspired by his students to dig deeper and discover the story of their school’s history.
October 12, 2024
This book is amazing and a must read for everyone! It is truly fascinating, letting us all in on an unknown piece of history. It is beautifully written and absolutely captivating. I am so grateful this book has been written so we can all learn from it. I cannot put it down!
December 7, 2024
A methodically researched and brilliantly written book .... a must read. Fascinating, historical that makes you think about right and wrong and how it can be open to interpretation in areas by some...
September 13, 2024
Michael Soffer’s Our Nazi is a clear and accessible history of one case of a former Nazi SS officer and concentration camp guard who immigrated to the United States. Like a fair number of others, he assumed a quiet suburban life while hiding his past from his neighbors and the authorities. Our Nazi does a very good job of describing the wider context of Nazi hunting in the 1970s and ’80s on the part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations as well as other organizations. Our Nazi is also a courtroom drama conveyed with skillful storytelling.
The historical research is thorough, and it is also very personal and includes the words and perspectives of many ordinary people, which makes it compelling reading. It depicts the conflict in the middle-class community of Oak Park, Illinois that results from the revelation that a well-known and well-liked neighbor and friend, Reinhold Kulle, has a dark Nazi past. The shock reverberates throughout the community and splits it into two factions. It illustrates very well how such community tensions can bring latent antisemitism to the surface and notes how this case followed a typical pattern in its public reaction: initial denial, then minimizing or normalizing the past behavior, followed by a call to let bygones be bygones that contrasts Christian forgiveness with Jewish vengeance.
Soffer rightly points out the intentional and unintentional distortions of record, and sometimes outright lies, of Kulle’s defenders, without painting them all with a broad brush of bad intentions. However, he does a disservice to the anti-Kulle contingent by not taking a more critical view of their position and contentions, because their side—which is where Soffer’s sympathies lie—is just not as comprehensible in his telling. I kept wanting more of an analytical framework through which to compare and contrast the ideas on both sides, rather than simply the documentation of righteous outrage that supposedly speaks for itself.
If understanding is the purpose, it would have been helpful to point out and discuss the pros and cons of both sides’ arguments in a systematic way. For example, the question of whether Kulle was a Nazi or a former Nazi is fundamental to understanding the schism. Kulle’s defenders, if they referred to his past, consistently called him a former Nazi. Kulle’s adversaries called him a Nazi just as consistently. It is a basic difference in point of view that causes, or at least is a symptom of, a deep rift in the community, but Soffer doesn’t point out this difference or analyze it in any way. The contrast remains implicit, when an explicit examination could have been illuminating.
Kulle’s friends, neighbors, and colleagues did not see him as a Nazi; there was nothing in his behavior in the community that coincided with Nazi ideology. His adversaries seemed to believe once a Nazi, always a Nazi, and that anyone who had participated in the Holocaust was a current moral danger. A case might be made for that point of view, but Soffer doesn’t make it and neither do his sources. To the Kulle adversaries, it was self-evident. It’s not self-evident to this reader, however, and so I’m left sympathetic but unenlightened.
The bias of the book is evident in its subtitle: an American suburb’s encounter with evil. Most people in Oak Park did not encounter evil in this case—Kulle was kind and supportive, a caring colleague, friend, and neighbor. He did a lot of good in his decades in Oak Park, which Soffer shows very clearly and fairly. There was no evidence that Kulle engaged in any persecution or other evil while he lived in Oak Park. To his adversaries, however, his presence in the community was experienced as the presence of evil. But I don’t understand this point of view, however much I would like to, and Soffer doesn’t explain it. I’d like to know the logic behind their argument that the legal issues should be separated from the moral issues. What exactly do they mean by “moral” in this situation? And more specifically, why should past wrongs be weighed more heavily than right living in the present? At one point a Kulle adversary maintains that it is an issue of justice rather than vengeance. I want to know what the difference is in their eyes, so that I can understand the distinction and their ardor in pursuing justice. But neither term is defined, so again, I’m left sympathetic but unenlightened. For those who aren’t sympathetic, antisemitic tropes often rush to fill in the explanation.
My academic background is in European history (master’s degree) and German culture (undergraduate), and I have a deep interest in the Holocaust though no personal connection to it. Although I think Our Nazi missed an opportunity to help explain the lasting impact of the past on Holocaust survivors and their descendants and relations, it did a good job of documenting that impact in Oak Park. I learned a lot from it, particularly regarding American perspectives on the Holocaust.
Thank you to NetGalley and the University of Chicago Press for providing access to an advance copy.
The historical research is thorough, and it is also very personal and includes the words and perspectives of many ordinary people, which makes it compelling reading. It depicts the conflict in the middle-class community of Oak Park, Illinois that results from the revelation that a well-known and well-liked neighbor and friend, Reinhold Kulle, has a dark Nazi past. The shock reverberates throughout the community and splits it into two factions. It illustrates very well how such community tensions can bring latent antisemitism to the surface and notes how this case followed a typical pattern in its public reaction: initial denial, then minimizing or normalizing the past behavior, followed by a call to let bygones be bygones that contrasts Christian forgiveness with Jewish vengeance.
Soffer rightly points out the intentional and unintentional distortions of record, and sometimes outright lies, of Kulle’s defenders, without painting them all with a broad brush of bad intentions. However, he does a disservice to the anti-Kulle contingent by not taking a more critical view of their position and contentions, because their side—which is where Soffer’s sympathies lie—is just not as comprehensible in his telling. I kept wanting more of an analytical framework through which to compare and contrast the ideas on both sides, rather than simply the documentation of righteous outrage that supposedly speaks for itself.
If understanding is the purpose, it would have been helpful to point out and discuss the pros and cons of both sides’ arguments in a systematic way. For example, the question of whether Kulle was a Nazi or a former Nazi is fundamental to understanding the schism. Kulle’s defenders, if they referred to his past, consistently called him a former Nazi. Kulle’s adversaries called him a Nazi just as consistently. It is a basic difference in point of view that causes, or at least is a symptom of, a deep rift in the community, but Soffer doesn’t point out this difference or analyze it in any way. The contrast remains implicit, when an explicit examination could have been illuminating.
Kulle’s friends, neighbors, and colleagues did not see him as a Nazi; there was nothing in his behavior in the community that coincided with Nazi ideology. His adversaries seemed to believe once a Nazi, always a Nazi, and that anyone who had participated in the Holocaust was a current moral danger. A case might be made for that point of view, but Soffer doesn’t make it and neither do his sources. To the Kulle adversaries, it was self-evident. It’s not self-evident to this reader, however, and so I’m left sympathetic but unenlightened.
The bias of the book is evident in its subtitle: an American suburb’s encounter with evil. Most people in Oak Park did not encounter evil in this case—Kulle was kind and supportive, a caring colleague, friend, and neighbor. He did a lot of good in his decades in Oak Park, which Soffer shows very clearly and fairly. There was no evidence that Kulle engaged in any persecution or other evil while he lived in Oak Park. To his adversaries, however, his presence in the community was experienced as the presence of evil. But I don’t understand this point of view, however much I would like to, and Soffer doesn’t explain it. I’d like to know the logic behind their argument that the legal issues should be separated from the moral issues. What exactly do they mean by “moral” in this situation? And more specifically, why should past wrongs be weighed more heavily than right living in the present? At one point a Kulle adversary maintains that it is an issue of justice rather than vengeance. I want to know what the difference is in their eyes, so that I can understand the distinction and their ardor in pursuing justice. But neither term is defined, so again, I’m left sympathetic but unenlightened. For those who aren’t sympathetic, antisemitic tropes often rush to fill in the explanation.
My academic background is in European history (master’s degree) and German culture (undergraduate), and I have a deep interest in the Holocaust though no personal connection to it. Although I think Our Nazi missed an opportunity to help explain the lasting impact of the past on Holocaust survivors and their descendants and relations, it did a good job of documenting that impact in Oak Park. I learned a lot from it, particularly regarding American perspectives on the Holocaust.
Thank you to NetGalley and the University of Chicago Press for providing access to an advance copy.
November 16, 2024
My daughter took the author’s Holocaust Studies course at OPRF. This is a well-written, engaging piece of history about our community.
August 21, 2024
I read a free advance digital review copy provided by the publisher, the University of Chicago Press, via NetGalley.
Maybe the first thing to understand is that the intended audience for this book appears to be readers who aren’t already very familiar with World War II, the Holocaust, or late 20th-century American history. Author Michael Soffer taught these topics to high schoolers, and young adults, or at least adults not yet familiar with the history, seem to be the level he’s aiming at. Soffer introduced his students to the shocking story of a man who had worked at their school (Oak Park-River Forest High School in the near west Chicago suburbs) as a longtime custodian some years before who had been found to have been an SS member and death camp guard during World War II. Readers who are already familiar with these topics might tire of the relatively superficial treatments of these topics that is necessary to provide context in what is a short book.
Soffer deftly describes why the country decided to bring hundreds of thousands of displaced persons to the US in the years after World War II, how antisemitism meant that there was an unconscionable limit on how many of them would be Jewish, and how incompetence, prejudice, and a lack of resources meant that a shocking number of former Nazis were allowed entry. Years went by before a concerted effort was made to identify Nazis among us and to deal with them. By then, of course, many of them had fully integrated themselves into American life, had jobs, homes, friends, families, and neighbors. The Chicago area had become home to many eastern Europeans in the postwar period, especially from the Baltic and Slavic countries that fell under USSR control after the war. These ethnic groups in Chicagoland were strongly anti-communist and were valued for that trait, but they were also often racist and antisemitic.
Once Soffer has provided his historical context, which includes a description of Reinhold Kulle’s life in Germany and how he ended up gaining admission to the US, we get to the crux of the book: how, over 40 years after the war ended, a community reacted when it learned that a longtime resident and seemingly kindly school employee had been a member of the SS Death’s Head regiment, served on the eastern front, and been a guard at Gross Rosen and other concentration and death camps.
Especially for young adults, the issues implicated by the Kulle case are well worth exploring. Older adults will mostly know about the rash of discoveries of former Nazis living in the US and their subsequent trials, their frequent deportations, and their later lives back in Europe, which sometimes included war crimes trials and sometimes not. But for young adults, this will be new, and it will be useful to read about the arguments over what should happen to Reinhold Kulle (and other former Nazis who became US citizens), and the sometimes surprising stands people took. At one level, it was easy. Kulle was charged in the US with immigration fraud, and he clearly had fraudulently filled out the forms needed to gain admission. But it’s not surprising that in the public consciousness, the case became much more than that; a revelation of deep-seated racial and ethnic prejudices, a difficult discussion about evil and redemption, a question of what debt is owed to victims long dead, a question of what standards we want to model for our youth. These are the kinds of issues we want young people to be introduced to, and for the young adult audience, this is a good way to make that introduction.
3.5 stars, rounded to 4 stars.
Maybe the first thing to understand is that the intended audience for this book appears to be readers who aren’t already very familiar with World War II, the Holocaust, or late 20th-century American history. Author Michael Soffer taught these topics to high schoolers, and young adults, or at least adults not yet familiar with the history, seem to be the level he’s aiming at. Soffer introduced his students to the shocking story of a man who had worked at their school (Oak Park-River Forest High School in the near west Chicago suburbs) as a longtime custodian some years before who had been found to have been an SS member and death camp guard during World War II. Readers who are already familiar with these topics might tire of the relatively superficial treatments of these topics that is necessary to provide context in what is a short book.
Soffer deftly describes why the country decided to bring hundreds of thousands of displaced persons to the US in the years after World War II, how antisemitism meant that there was an unconscionable limit on how many of them would be Jewish, and how incompetence, prejudice, and a lack of resources meant that a shocking number of former Nazis were allowed entry. Years went by before a concerted effort was made to identify Nazis among us and to deal with them. By then, of course, many of them had fully integrated themselves into American life, had jobs, homes, friends, families, and neighbors. The Chicago area had become home to many eastern Europeans in the postwar period, especially from the Baltic and Slavic countries that fell under USSR control after the war. These ethnic groups in Chicagoland were strongly anti-communist and were valued for that trait, but they were also often racist and antisemitic.
Once Soffer has provided his historical context, which includes a description of Reinhold Kulle’s life in Germany and how he ended up gaining admission to the US, we get to the crux of the book: how, over 40 years after the war ended, a community reacted when it learned that a longtime resident and seemingly kindly school employee had been a member of the SS Death’s Head regiment, served on the eastern front, and been a guard at Gross Rosen and other concentration and death camps.
Especially for young adults, the issues implicated by the Kulle case are well worth exploring. Older adults will mostly know about the rash of discoveries of former Nazis living in the US and their subsequent trials, their frequent deportations, and their later lives back in Europe, which sometimes included war crimes trials and sometimes not. But for young adults, this will be new, and it will be useful to read about the arguments over what should happen to Reinhold Kulle (and other former Nazis who became US citizens), and the sometimes surprising stands people took. At one level, it was easy. Kulle was charged in the US with immigration fraud, and he clearly had fraudulently filled out the forms needed to gain admission. But it’s not surprising that in the public consciousness, the case became much more than that; a revelation of deep-seated racial and ethnic prejudices, a difficult discussion about evil and redemption, a question of what debt is owed to victims long dead, a question of what standards we want to model for our youth. These are the kinds of issues we want young people to be introduced to, and for the young adult audience, this is a good way to make that introduction.
3.5 stars, rounded to 4 stars.
April 10, 2024
It's like Stanley Milgram's Dead Poet's Society.
The core of Our Nazi is a description of the deportation trial of Reinhold Kulle. Kulle was a Nazi soldier, a member of the SS with an airquotes distinguished war record on the eastern front and subsequently a guard at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. The trial was interesting from a legal perspective as arising out of a new law regarding former Nazis, as unlike a lot of others, Kulle had not lied on his immigration papers, nor was any foreign power looking to extradite him, so the trial was Nurenburg Lite, where his defense amounted to proving that, while he was a Nazi, he wasn't one of the bad ones.
The trial, however, is not the full narrative. The real story here is that Kulle was a custodian of long service at a high school in Oak Park, Illinois. Oak Park is a suburb of Chicago, and number two on the list of suburbs that people from Chicago make fun of. It is a place so liberal that even the highway exits are on the left. It is here that Kulle worked as a custodian, becoming a beloved institution at the school due to his demanding standards of work and volunteering his time to help others succeed. It was a shock when his history came out.
...wait, I read that wrong. Most people were not shocked. Most people defended him.
A few were shocked. But most locals ignored it. Or made excuses for him. Or misunderstood what was going on, somewhat dramatically in the case of the major newspapers. This included administrators quite literally standing with neo-Nazis rather than Holocaust survivors at his trial so as to stand with Kulle.
The book is superb. The writing is clear, and the author makes deft structural choices, such as in telling what we know of Kulle's history as woven together with the histories of survivors from the camp where he worked. It is meticulously sourced. The tone is not sensational, but it does tend towards the breathless, which bothered me at first; by the end I was right there with it. Which is to say that this is the sort of book you will spend the fortnight after reading looking to grab people by the lapels and say 'hey, you have to hear this story.' Which I think
One of the most affecting choices is to focus on the students at the school, and how they are observing and reporting on the events. The students here often feel like the only proverbial adults in the room. And I love the author's style in general. It would be wrong to call it apolitical, (aside from a bit on Regan administration policy), but Soffler understands that he does not need to amp up the rhetoric. Even as his own positions on things is not in doubt, he can let a unadorned statement of the facts speak for themselves.
It is the best sort of history, in how it feels like nothing has changed but everything has changed, how you can note all the ways this would play out differently but also how it reflects all the same problems. The ending could be unsatisfactory in the way that real life often is, but Soffler nails it in an epilogue about other, more recent looks at the story. Overall, it is an impressive book, and I hope the author writes more of them.
My thanks to the author, Michael Soffer, for writing the book, and to the publisher, University of Chicago Press, for making the ARC available to me.
The core of Our Nazi is a description of the deportation trial of Reinhold Kulle. Kulle was a Nazi soldier, a member of the SS with an airquotes distinguished war record on the eastern front and subsequently a guard at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. The trial was interesting from a legal perspective as arising out of a new law regarding former Nazis, as unlike a lot of others, Kulle had not lied on his immigration papers, nor was any foreign power looking to extradite him, so the trial was Nurenburg Lite, where his defense amounted to proving that, while he was a Nazi, he wasn't one of the bad ones.
The trial, however, is not the full narrative. The real story here is that Kulle was a custodian of long service at a high school in Oak Park, Illinois. Oak Park is a suburb of Chicago, and number two on the list of suburbs that people from Chicago make fun of. It is a place so liberal that even the highway exits are on the left. It is here that Kulle worked as a custodian, becoming a beloved institution at the school due to his demanding standards of work and volunteering his time to help others succeed. It was a shock when his history came out.
...wait, I read that wrong. Most people were not shocked. Most people defended him.
A few were shocked. But most locals ignored it. Or made excuses for him. Or misunderstood what was going on, somewhat dramatically in the case of the major newspapers. This included administrators quite literally standing with neo-Nazis rather than Holocaust survivors at his trial so as to stand with Kulle.
The book is superb. The writing is clear, and the author makes deft structural choices, such as in telling what we know of Kulle's history as woven together with the histories of survivors from the camp where he worked. It is meticulously sourced. The tone is not sensational, but it does tend towards the breathless, which bothered me at first; by the end I was right there with it. Which is to say that this is the sort of book you will spend the fortnight after reading looking to grab people by the lapels and say 'hey, you have to hear this story.' Which I think
One of the most affecting choices is to focus on the students at the school, and how they are observing and reporting on the events. The students here often feel like the only proverbial adults in the room. And I love the author's style in general. It would be wrong to call it apolitical, (aside from a bit on Regan administration policy), but Soffler understands that he does not need to amp up the rhetoric. Even as his own positions on things is not in doubt, he can let a unadorned statement of the facts speak for themselves.
It is the best sort of history, in how it feels like nothing has changed but everything has changed, how you can note all the ways this would play out differently but also how it reflects all the same problems. The ending could be unsatisfactory in the way that real life often is, but Soffler nails it in an epilogue about other, more recent looks at the story. Overall, it is an impressive book, and I hope the author writes more of them.
My thanks to the author, Michael Soffer, for writing the book, and to the publisher, University of Chicago Press, for making the ARC available to me.
Read
November 30, 2025I found it too difficult to
rate this book. The author is a current history teacher at my old high school and his book is about not just a former nazi who entered this country after WW2 by lying on his visa application, but this man was also someone I knew and cared about. I am now 70I went to high school in the early 70s, when Reinhold Kulle was in the middle of his civilian career as head custodian at Oak Park-River Forest high School in Oak Park, Illinois where I grew up. I spent many evenings and late nights as an usher for student productions and public programs, and all of us young women (and a few young men) trusted Reinhold to keep us safe when we were often the last ones in the building. Our parents trusted, and thanked him, as well. I remember my father remarking when he picked me up that he appreciated that Reinhold stayed so late to see us safely out the door. What no one knew until about ten years later was that Herr Kulle was a ranking member of the SS Death Head squad at the Gross-Rosen slave labor camp. The first chapters of the book detail some of what happened at that camp, and suggests that Kulle took part in brutal discipline, perhaps murder, of the residents of Gross-Rosen. The rest of the book is an account of how the village of Oak Park struggled with how to think of their friend, this former Nazi. The school board and most of the faculty were sympathetic, yet the one Jewish member of the school board became the conscience that unrelentingly sought the deportation of the man. The book is very detailed, with pages of notes at the end citing references from hearings, documents,and interviews After finishing the book (I knew the end, that Reinhold was eventually deported and lived a free German until his death), many feelings were brought up again. Of course the Holocaust must be kept alive in history books and instruction. When the kind, funny, caring man I knew is shown to be likely guilty of horrible crimes - that is why this is still a controversial topic among those of us who knew him personally. But i am proud of the students in the 90s and 21st century who are wondering how a Nazi could ever have been considered acceptable on the staff of their school. (I don't know that this book would be of interest unless you live(d) in Oak Park - the details of the board meetings and research into who knew what and when.. it would likely be boring unless you are interested in the social effects of the situation).
rate this book. The author is a current history teacher at my old high school and his book is about not just a former nazi who entered this country after WW2 by lying on his visa application, but this man was also someone I knew and cared about. I am now 70I went to high school in the early 70s, when Reinhold Kulle was in the middle of his civilian career as head custodian at Oak Park-River Forest high School in Oak Park, Illinois where I grew up. I spent many evenings and late nights as an usher for student productions and public programs, and all of us young women (and a few young men) trusted Reinhold to keep us safe when we were often the last ones in the building. Our parents trusted, and thanked him, as well. I remember my father remarking when he picked me up that he appreciated that Reinhold stayed so late to see us safely out the door. What no one knew until about ten years later was that Herr Kulle was a ranking member of the SS Death Head squad at the Gross-Rosen slave labor camp. The first chapters of the book detail some of what happened at that camp, and suggests that Kulle took part in brutal discipline, perhaps murder, of the residents of Gross-Rosen. The rest of the book is an account of how the village of Oak Park struggled with how to think of their friend, this former Nazi. The school board and most of the faculty were sympathetic, yet the one Jewish member of the school board became the conscience that unrelentingly sought the deportation of the man. The book is very detailed, with pages of notes at the end citing references from hearings, documents,and interviews After finishing the book (I knew the end, that Reinhold was eventually deported and lived a free German until his death), many feelings were brought up again. Of course the Holocaust must be kept alive in history books and instruction. When the kind, funny, caring man I knew is shown to be likely guilty of horrible crimes - that is why this is still a controversial topic among those of us who knew him personally. But i am proud of the students in the 90s and 21st century who are wondering how a Nazi could ever have been considered acceptable on the staff of their school. (I don't know that this book would be of interest unless you live(d) in Oak Park - the details of the board meetings and research into who knew what and when.. it would likely be boring unless you are interested in the social effects of the situation).
November 21, 2025
This book was very informative and interesting. I would’ve liked to have heard more from the community members now as they look back on that time and see if their perspective of the situation had changed at all. I would’ve also liked to have heard more from Kulle himself although I imagine he was pretty close lipped throughout the investigation. However, his comment to the school board was very telling. It made me wonder if the people supporting him would have expected him to make that comment or still support him knowing that comment. I wonder also what his life was like when he went back to Germany. I inferred that many family members did not follow him back. Overall, it was an interesting read but left me with more questions.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 8, 2024
Reinhold Kulle seemed like the perfect school employee. He is the beloved school custodian in Oak Park, IL. That is until the Office of Special Investigations started looking for former Nazis that made it to the United States by lying. Kulle is discovered to have been a guard at a labor camp during WWII. This book is written by a Oak Park and River Forest High School teacher, Michael Soffer on how the commmunity responded to the findings. The book is very well written, I am just dissapointed in how many responded. I maybe dissapointed but shoulldn’t be surprised.
Thank you NetGalley and University of Chicago Press for an advanced copy! #OurNazi #NetGalley
Thank you NetGalley and University of Chicago Press for an advanced copy! #OurNazi #NetGalley
June 21, 2025
Soffer's book is for the most part a quick and engaging read. It is different things for different audiences: For people in Chicagoland, it is a very interesting piece of local history with great connections to national and international events and movements in the latter 20th century. For anyone who has read a bit about the Holocaust, it is probably old news and not very interesting.
I enjoyed Soffer's writing style but found his conclusions and lack of analysis uninteresting. Soffer is modeling everything he would want his history students to do- establishing context, citing a variety of archives, talking to witnesses, and trying to get into people's heads and think through their motivations and experiences. He even points out the usefulness of historians and their craft explicitly, anothrr mark of a good (and perhaps anxious) history teacher. It reads like a great term paper on a single historical case. What he doesn't do, however, is expressly dive into any of the moral and historical questions Kulle's case brings up. I can't help but think about the number of former US special "operators," IDF volunteers, and CCP cadres who might have had jobs and worldviews very similar to Kulle's in Iraq, Palestine, or East Turkestan. Will middle-class suburbanites organize committees of correspondence and call for justice on behalf of the victims of today's genocides in school board meetings? I think not.
The fact that the United States was officially an enemy of the Nazi regime offers us a shortcut out of thinking through the real moral quandries that the book highlights in the present. It is very easy for us today to look at Kulle's defenders and think of them as callous and ridiculous. This is I think the result of a serious push to teach the Holocaust in public schools. But what happens when the US government is not on the history teachers' side? I wish that Soffer had offered more of his reflections on teaching this in his classroom. What we are left with is a good story, well told, that doesn't deliver anything greater.
I enjoyed Soffer's writing style but found his conclusions and lack of analysis uninteresting. Soffer is modeling everything he would want his history students to do- establishing context, citing a variety of archives, talking to witnesses, and trying to get into people's heads and think through their motivations and experiences. He even points out the usefulness of historians and their craft explicitly, anothrr mark of a good (and perhaps anxious) history teacher. It reads like a great term paper on a single historical case. What he doesn't do, however, is expressly dive into any of the moral and historical questions Kulle's case brings up. I can't help but think about the number of former US special "operators," IDF volunteers, and CCP cadres who might have had jobs and worldviews very similar to Kulle's in Iraq, Palestine, or East Turkestan. Will middle-class suburbanites organize committees of correspondence and call for justice on behalf of the victims of today's genocides in school board meetings? I think not.
The fact that the United States was officially an enemy of the Nazi regime offers us a shortcut out of thinking through the real moral quandries that the book highlights in the present. It is very easy for us today to look at Kulle's defenders and think of them as callous and ridiculous. This is I think the result of a serious push to teach the Holocaust in public schools. But what happens when the US government is not on the history teachers' side? I wish that Soffer had offered more of his reflections on teaching this in his classroom. What we are left with is a good story, well told, that doesn't deliver anything greater.
October 16, 2025
This book is more a textbook than story, which makes it fairly dry. And it often branches out into stories of other nazis in America. It is disturbing to read about how many people felt the Holocaust should remain in the past and “time to move on” without holding people responsible for their actions. It is also is very eerie reading today, seeing so many people ignore racism and cruel acts right in front of them.
April 27, 2025
This book was extremely well researched and interesting, but the subject matter made it difficult to read. I already know much about the Holocaust, so there were no surprises for me. What upset me was the narrative surrounding the OPRF community's responses to the Nazi in their high school. The antisemitism in this so-called liberal and accepting community was sickening but not surprising.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews