Complicity. Angry. Amazed. Horrified. Conflicted. Dispirited. Complicity. Horrified. Forgiveness. Justice. Horrified.
These were words spoken and repeated as a group of about 30 older women, members of 19th Century Club’s book group, launched a conversation recently about interrelated events that had occurred in the 1940s in Germany and in the 1980s in Oak Park — and what it means in today’s political climate.
We were discussing Our Nazi, subtitled: “An American Suburb’s Encounter with Evil” (Chicago University Press, 2024), which recounts how our welcoming village was divided over the revelation in 1982 that Reinhold Kulle, a longtime, beloved, even “indispensable” custodian at Oak Park and River Forest High School, was an admitted Nazi SS concentration camp guard (Kulle was eventually deported for lying on his visa application).
The book was written (and meticulously footnoted) by Michael Soffer, a former OPRF teacher, after realizing his students knew little about the Holocaust and nothing about the events of four decades ago.
Surprisingly, some of the club participants who had lived here at the time — some then, with children in the school — said they had known little about what was going on. Others had known but hadn’t chosen (or hadn’t the time) to be part of the community discussion. And others remained upset all these years later, particularly with what they view as the rise of antisemitism in our nation and even in our friendly village.
Collectively, we were all incensed with Kulle’s comment (never quoted publicly but reportedly given in executive session after his deportation order) that “I feel bad, very bad. I just wished we had won the war.”
Me? In 1982 I was living in suburban New York. Word didn’t reach me about Reinhold Kulle and his beautiful Forest Park garden, and how kind he was to everyone and how he couldn’t possibly have been involved with — or even known about — the mass murders of thousands in the Gross-Rosen slave camp in the 1940s. This despite the fact that he had received two medals for his service.
The New York Times did not write about the lavish going-away party he was given by school colleagues in 1984 nor the generous retirement package he was secretly awarded (details sealed for 40 years) by school administrators, who declined to take any action against him until the deportation order. (After being deported in 1987 to West Germany, he collected this pension until his death in 2006.)
I wasn’t then a reader of Wednesday Journal, which covered the case regularly. The internet was in its baby stages; social media hadn’t been invented. Today, the internet abounds with thousands of links about Kulle because of the book. What might have happened if social media existed back in 1982?
Here are my takeaways from this book and our discussion. (Yes, 20/20 hindsight.)
• The school board should have immediately put Kulle on leave when he admitted to having been a Nazi guard. It failed to protect the impressionable teenagers who fell under his spell, who thought they were coming to the aid of an underdog. Some see parallels in how, despite the events of October 2023 and the abduction of Israelis, the Palestinians have become the good guys and the Israelis (think all Jews) the perpetrators.
• Absent a “smoking gun” — testimony that Kulle had personally shot anyone or seen anyone shot — people refused to believe someone they knew and liked could have done such horrific things. Had people been aware of his regret that the Nazis lost, would that have changed public opinion?
• Redemption is possible for many things, but there are sins against humanity that are just not forgivable even when committed decades previously or in one’s youth. And no redemption is deserved when Kulle never asked for forgiveness and denied (lied about) his role.
• There will always be heroes. There were Oak Parkers who regularly attended Kulle’s court proceedings in solidarity with the Holocaust survivors who testified. As individuals, we need to strive to be a hero by speaking out, seeking out the truth, paying attention.
• Going forth, education is crucial. We must teach about the Holocaust and slavery and ICE and other atrocities of the past and the present. Otherwise it could happen again.
Donna Greene, an Oak Park resident, is a volunteer editor for Growing Community Media, which publishes Wednesday Journal.