Michael Soffer in conversation with Joel Rubin on "Our Nazi"

Reinhold Kulle seemed like the perfect school employee. But in 1982, his long-concealed secret came to light. The chief custodian at Oak Park and River Forest High School had been a guard at a brutal slave labor camp during World War II. In his debut book Our Nazi: An American Suburb's Encounter With Evil, Michael Soffer, former history teacher at OPRF, digs into his community’s tumultuous response to the Kulle affair.

Though Nazis loomed in the American consciousness as evil epitomized, in Oak Park—a Chicago suburb renowned for its liberalism—some rose to defend Reinhold Kulle. During his tenure at OPRF, Michael Soffer taught Holocaust studies in a classroom that the former Nazi camp guard used to clean. His book explores the uncomfortable truths of how and why onetime Nazis found allies in American communities after their gruesome pasts were uncovered. For this event, he will be in conversation with Joel Rubin, a longtime leader in the field of social work and a member of the board of the Chicago Jewish Historical Center.

Michael Soffer is a history teacher at Lake Forest High School. His writing has appeared in publications such as the Forward, Chicago Jewish History, and the Times of Israel. This is his first book.

Joel L. Rubin has served as the Executive Director of the Illinois Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers for 25 years. A graduate of the Wexner Heritage Fellow Leadership Program, Rubin is also an adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Social Work. He serves on the State of Illinois’s Behavioral Healthcare Workforce Advisory Committee, the board of the Illinois Children’s Mental Health Partnership, the City of Chicago’s Council on Mental Health Equity, and the Network for Social Work Management.

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