Meet the Nazi Who Hid in Plain Sight in Suburban Chicago for Nearly 30 Years

On October 26, 1957, Reinhold Kulle and his family left Cuxhaven, Germany, aboard the MS Italia, bound for a new life in America.

But as Michael Soffer reveals in “Our Nazi: An American Suburb’s Encounter with Evil” (University of Chicago Press), Kulle carried a dark secret.

Throughout World War II, Kulle had not only been a member of the Nazi Waffen-SS, but had also worked at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp where 40,000 Jews died.

Kulle was one of about 10,000 Nazis who entered the United States after the war and, like others, integrated into his community, his neighbors unaware of his past.

Born in 1921, Kulle was a member of the Hitler Youth before volunteering for the combat wing of the Waffen-SS in 1940.

“Other boys in the Hitler Youth were reluctant to join the SS, alarmed by the prospect of committing atrocities,” Soffer writes.

“Kulle was not discouraged.”

Having joined the army, Kulle was wounded fighting the Russians and was transferred to Gross-Rosen in his native Silesia, which exempted him from front-line action.

Gross-Rosen was supposed to be a labor camp, not a killing center like Auschwitz-Birkenau or Treblinka.

But that was not the case.

“A compromise was reached among the Nazi leaders: they would kill the old, the young, the sick and the weak, and all the Jews who were still exploitable would be sent to labor camps like Gross-Rosen,” he writes.

“Then they too would be murdered.”

Kulle rose through the ranks at Gross-Rosen, overseeing the construction of a new crematorium.

But by the spring of 1944, overcrowding meant that there were more than 40,000 prisoners instead of a maximum of 13,000.

“The sewer system was overwhelmed and feces flowed into the stream that supplied the prisoners with drinking water,” Soffer wrote.

“Even the new crematorium couldn’t keep up.”

When the war ended in 1944, Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act (DPA) in 1948, making it easier for immigrants to enter the United States.

Kulle saw an opportunity.

After obtaining a visa, Kulle, his wife Gertrud and children Ulricke and Rainer were allowed to enter the United States.

After docking in New York in 1957, they headed to Oak Park, near Chicago, where in 1959 he took a job as a custodian at Oak Park and River Forest (OPRF) High School.

He was the perfect employee.

Reliable and hard-working, nothing was too much trouble for Kulle and in 1963 he was promoted to the position of head night watchman.

“Kulle was indispensable in high school,” Soffer wrote. “He was the reference for all the faculty members.”

Soon, Kulle and his family moved into a bungalow. “He faded into obscurity, just another laborer in Middle America with a thick accent and an unknown past,” Soffer says.

He wasn’t the only Nazi in the neighborhood.

Albert Deutscher lived near Brookfield.

During the war, Deutscher “shot and killed hundreds of unarmed Jews, including children,” Soffer adds.

“His neighbors never suspected anything.”

In December 1981, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), created to deport Nazi war criminals, formally charged Deutscher with war crimes and falsifying his visa application.

A few hours later, Deutscher found himself in front of a train.

As Deutscher’s neighbors expressed disbelief, Kulle knew the net was closing.

In the summer of 1981, OSA investigators began “DORA” (“dead or alive”) checks on suspected Nazis, including “a former camp guard from German Silesia: Reinhold Kulle.”

In July 1982, Kulle, now 61, received his first correspondence from OSI, and when he met with prosecutor Bruce Einhorn, he knew the game was up.

They had everything from Kulle’s personnel file to his handwritten marriage proposal detailing his Nazi background. “They even had pictures of Kulle in his SS uniform,” Soffer adds.

Kulle claimed that all he did was escort the prisoners around Gross-Rosen and that he never killed anyone.

But he had lied on his visa application.

This alone was grounds for expulsion.

When the Chicago Sun-Times published the article “Suburban Man Targeted by Deportation Request” on December 4, 1982, the die was cast. “After decades of silence, Kulle’s secret is now public,” Soffer wrote.

As the story reverberated through the community, many wanted him gone.

But a surprising number of people defended him.

The school board even received an anonymous letter, apparently from faculty members, asking Kulle to stay.

After much deliberation, Kulle was placed on leave on January 24, 1984.

“At that point, there were no more Nazis working at the school,” Soffer said.

In November 1984, Judge Olga Springer ordered Kulle’s deportation, but it took almost three years before the decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal.

On October 26, 1987, Kulle was taken to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and boarded a plane bound for West Germany.

“He landed at 00:45 on Tuesday morning and headed to a relative’s house in Lahr, the town he had left thirty years earlier,” Soffer wrote.

Kulle has lost touch with most of the friends he made in Oak Park.

The only reminder of his time there came in the form of a monthly retirement check from the Illinois Metropolitan Retirement Fund. “He almost lived long enough to answer for his actions,” Soffer adds, “but those pension payments stopped in 2006 when he died in Germany, still a free man.”