'Our Nazi': The story of a Nazi who lived in Chicago for three decades

 

Reinhold Kulle was considered an outstanding school custodian, beloved and respected by the staff and students of Oak Park and River Forest High School.

It took more than three decades for any of the five Allied Anglo-Saxon democracies that fought against Nazi Germany in World War II (the US, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and New Zealand), which against all logic admitted entry to hundreds, if not thousands, of Nazi criminals as immigrants, to take any legal measures against those persons who had lied to obtain permission to enter. It was only in 1979 that the US, which admitted the largest number of former Nazis, estimated at 10,000, established the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) to exclusively prosecute former Nazi collaborators who lied on their immigration applications in order to obtain permission to enter the United States and subsequently become American citizens.

Three other countries – Canada in 1986, Australia in 1989, and Great Britain in 1991 – followed suit and passed laws to enable taking legal measures against former Nazi collaborators. The only country that refused to prosecute those who lied about their service with the Axis forces was New Zealand. (South Africa was hermetically closed to immigration.)

Today, now that almost all of the perpetrators are no longer alive, and it appears that there will not be any more Nazi trials, historians, journalists, and writers can summarize the results achieved by each of the countries that tried to take legal action against the Holocaust criminals who sought refuge in Anglo-Saxon democracies, and the same is true for Germany. So far, three excellent books have been published this year about three different countries, which summarize their efforts to bring Holocaust perpetrators to justice.  (more...)

'Our Nazi': The story of a Nazi who lived in Chicago for three decades