Fascinating. A powerful and impeccably researched account of one former Nazi's relocation to Chicago in the post-war period. Stories such as this are vital in helping us understand the 'banality of evil' and our reckoning with it, both in past and present contexts. Complex, shocking and stranger than fiction, this is a fantastic read for any history or sociology lovers.

Ever since I visited the Holocaust Museum in D.C. (way back in high school so about 20+ years ago) I was shocked and in awe as to what I saw and learned there. That was the day that started my obsession with historical fiction books (fiction and nonfiction) set in the Holocaust times.

This book absolutely devastated me. This is a heartbreaking but eye-opening book that shows how evil people can be to other people. It also shows how the evil continues even to this day. This book had me hooked from the very beginning and I couldn't put it down until it was over because I just had to know what happened next. When I finished the book, I was speechless, had tears in my eyes, and had to pick my jaw up from the floor.

I think this book would be great for a social studies/history class. I think this should be read as a group and then have a discussion about it once the book is finished. I also think that this book should be read in every school so that future generations know just how bad people were treated in the past - all because they didn't look the way certain people wanted them to look.


5/5 stars for sure

Reinhold Kulle was a Nazi camp guard. He resettled in a Chicago suburb and became a school custodian. As his retirement nears, he is outed as a Nazi guard. He was not the only one who was discovered across the country. Michael Soffer is a teacher at the schools where Kulle was a custodian. Given this story, he wondered how many more there were across the country. He discovers the story of many others and how they found refuge in America and how their pasts were set aside. A fascinating look at what happened here after the war.

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.

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

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.

Were the millions upon millions of lives lost during the Holocaust in vain? You would think so after reading this story of how our government was complacent in allowing Nazi murderers to live and thrive within our borders. A lot of research went into this look back at a history most of us never even knew about. As angry as I am, I'm still thankful this book is out there. So much to be ashamed of. It hurts those of us who believe in God and country, with pure hearts. May those lost during Nazi atrocities rest in peace.

This is a chilling and meticulously researched account of how the insidious presence of a Nazi sympathiser infiltrated a seemingly ordinary American suburb. Soffer draws readers into a disturbing chapter of history, painting a vivid picture of the profound impact one man's extremist ideology can have on an entire community. This is a captivating and thought-provoking read.

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.

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.

Our Nazi is a chilling but fascinating book that looks at how evil people can still be around and how evil can persist over time. Michael Soffer brings to life a true horror story with the seemingly normal custodian being a former Nazi and the effect it had on the school and community as a whole.

As a student of the Holocaust, this book devastated me.
The story of a suburban Chicago janitor who is exposed as a nazi.
I am aware that German citizens didn't have much say in joining the hitler youth or the nazi party,
but they did have say in joining the SS.
Reinhold Kulleworked in a brutal slave labor camp during WW II where thousands or Jews, Poles and others were worked/starved/beaten to death.
He later somehow immigrates to the United States were he eventually found work as a janitor and became a beloved member of the community. After the truth came out about his past many people in the community we dismissive, forget his past, long time ago, it was the war, bd things happened. This stunned me. Do these Americans know what happened in these camps?
One of the saddest things II think I ever read was that the guards were planning to set up target practice outside the camp using, I guess, wooden or metal targets but then the commandant had great news, they had about 50 Polish intellectuals that had been rounded up and they could be used as the targets. That's part of what the camps were like.
The book describes the life in the camps and then how in the aftermath how so many nazis escaped prosecution and moved to countries around the world and lived ordinary lives. An excellent primer about the holocaust and about people who never paid the price for their atrocities.

This is an excellent book that explores the true case of a high school janitor / facilities manager whose secret past becomes the source of angst, outrage and division in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb better known for its Frank Lloyd Wright homes and reasonable commute to the Loop than for its struggle to wrestle with a well-liked man's ugly past. Great research & pacing.

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 can 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 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.

This book brings history into one's front door (or, in this case, the school house door). There are a lot of books written about the escape and subsequent evasion of former third reich personnel, but this books stands apart. There is a mix of scholarship and memoir here that makes it readable, intriguing, and academic in scope. It's unsettling; it makes us question who the ordinary people are, who come in and out of our lives, and what stories they hold inside. I kept wondering who I have crossed paths with who has a story they don't want let out.
I also feel this book is a great meditation on the banality of evil (Arendt). For when someone has grown to accept their actions, and the wider actions of a regime or group of people, there develops a moral quandary about how to do with it (as well as how those who encounter the perpetrators should also react). This book raises a lot of introspective, moral questions about the communities we keep, the members of them, and how we respond to others' pasts.

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.

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 like myself. I found it basic, and thought it didn't provide any new insight 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 reactions.

It's like Stanley Millgram'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.

You might assume that this would come as a shock to the community, and rightfully a few were shocked. Most didn't care. 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 beside 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, and passes my citation test so utterly that I would name it after the author if I did that sort of thing. The tone is not sensational, but it does tend towards the breathless, but in the end, I felt this wholly justified by the story of the facts. 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.'

One of the most affecting choices is to focus on the students at the school, which belies the author's job as a high school history teacher, but is justified. 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, which admittedly I was not aware of and was interesting to learn), but Soffer 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 Soffer 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.

(Links to be added upon posting closer to publication)

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!

Our Nazi is the debut novel by high school history teacher, Michael Soffer. This is an extremely well-researched and detailed story of Reinhold Kulle, a revered custodian of Oak Park River Forest High School. Kulle was a member of the Nazi party and an SS guard at a slave labor camp in World War II, unbeknownst to his American community until near his retirement.

This story is well-told, but I got a little lost and disinterested in the details that didn't involve Kulle himself.