[HN Gopher] The Nazi of Oak Park
___________________________________________________________________
The Nazi of Oak Park
Author : gmays
Score : 94 points
Date : 2024-10-08 12:41 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chicagomag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chicagomag.com)
| parkaboy wrote:
| The even wilder thing is that the CIA actively hired former Nazis
| (and relocated them and their families) in Operation Paperclip
| after the war to aid in Cold War operations...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
| dnissley wrote:
| It's not really all that wild when you consider that they were
| hired for their impressive achievements in various fields and
| not their loyalty to the nazi party.
| tmiku wrote:
| I don't think he's asserting they brought in Nazis for the
| fun of having them around. But it's surprising that while
| heightened ties to the Nazis would disqualify you from
| immigration eligibility, the most secretive circles of the
| state (and ones highly acquainted with Nazi brutality) were
| actively recruiting these people. Shows how deep the anti-
| Soviet derangement ran.
| zer8k wrote:
| Derangement? Stalin was extremely suspicious of the west
| and even went so far as to accuse of us collaborating with
| Hitler himself. Not only that, the Soviet regime was
| excessively brutal. One of the worst in history despite not
| being mentioned much in modern history books. The treatment
| of captives during wartime, the Eastern Bloc in total, etc.
| While not a primary source "Soviet War Crimes" has a
| massive Wikipedia entry detailing just how bad the soviets
| were. At least related to WW2 alone we can look to how
| their treatment of the Polish was after pushing Germany
| out. They murdered Finnish civilians en masse during raids.
| Further, their deportation campaigns were enough to make
| most period despots blush.
|
| To believe that anti-Soviet sentiment was "derangement" is
| extremely delusional.
| FredPret wrote:
| They also had / have very deep spy networks of socialist
| sympathizers stealing secrets, including huge ones like
| plans for The Bomb.
|
| A significant amount of Soviet military "research" was
| done in the West.
| 0x12312812 wrote:
| That applies to the superb rocket scientists.
|
| Others were hired for their expertise as spies, secret police
| and worse:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-
| age...
|
| "Some spies for the United States had worked at the highest
| levels for the Nazis.
|
| One SS officer, Otto von Bolschwing, was a mentor and top
| aide to Adolf Eichmann, architect of the "Final Solution,"
| and wrote policy papers on how to terrorize Jews."
| 0x1231246 wrote:
| The second sentence was supposed to mean: "hired for their
| expertise as spies, and _despite having been in the secret
| police or worse_ ".
|
| If that slip is the reason for the downvotes, fine.
| Otherwise, blame the NYT.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| In such a state, it's hard to be "respected in your field"
| unless you publicly pledge loyalty to the ruling party. This
| does not mean that all such people were all apolitical, just
| that their motives and outlook will vary. And that for people
| who were prominent when the Nazis came to power, there likely
| wasn't much middle ground between "leave the country, go far
| away" and "join the party".
| the_gorilla wrote:
| This also applies to the US to a lesser extent. If you want
| to work in academia, there's a very strict subset of ideas
| you're allowed to even consider.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| To which "ruling party" do you have to pledge loyalty to,
| in order to work in academia?
|
| An example of loyalty tests in current US politics did
| come to my mind, but it wasn't that one.
| goatlover wrote:
| Academia is broad, what strict subset of ideas would
| apply to everyone in the US?
| the_gorilla wrote:
| "Denial" crimes. There's at least 3 of them involving
| race, gender, and religion. Good luck getting funding or
| even keeping your shitty job if you commit any of these
| cardinal sins.
| debit-freak wrote:
| I think what people find "wild" is likely the blatant
| contradictions in rhetoric between valuing humans and valuing
| "impressive achievements". The US and the NAZIs are merely
| the best examples of valuing the latter over the former. At
| least, for now.
|
| Notably, nobody in this entire comment section has been able
| to articulate how the space race has improved humanity more
| than equivalent efforts that focus on human quality of life,
| like implementing a public healthcare system. Whitey On The
| Moon rings just as true now as it did 60 years ago. Political
| posturing that happened to spawn technological development is
| a poor excuse for lack of coherent values. The fact that we
| achieved something that is truly admirable does not excuse
| for the general lack of giving-a-shit-about-humans that
| surrounds national politics. You know what else would be
| admirable? Taking care of our neighbors even if they don't
| contribute to the GDP.
| underlipton wrote:
| It becomes again wild when you remember that the Cold War was
| only "necessary" because of US antagonism post-war. This
| isn't passing judgment on Soviet policies, only a recognition
| that conflict might not have been so heated if we'd learned
| our lesson from how the disintegration of US-Japanese
| relations had drawn us into the previous war.
|
| Essentially, the US seems to have a habit of being "forced"
| to ally with undesirable elements after some lapse in
| geopolitical awareness or effort leads to hostilities (sound
| familiar?).
| FredPret wrote:
| Are you saying the Soviets took the "kumbaya" approach to
| communism and if only the US chilled out, there would've
| been no conflict?
|
| Surely you cannot believe that?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >It becomes again wild when you remember that the Cold War
| was only "necessary" because of US antagonism post-war.
|
| Only if you ignore communist antagonism in Europe, Asia,
| Africa, and Latin America. Up to and including their own
| allies when they gave their citizens a little too much
| freedom. I have several books in Czech on my shelf with a
| copyright date of 1968, a year in which far more books were
| published than years prior, I wonder why they share that
| year?
| Insanity wrote:
| Yes, they were hired _despite_ their loyalty (and sometimes
| despite their war crimes).
|
| But not just because of their 'impressive achievements'
| during their time as Nazi scientists, part of why they were
| hired was because the US was afraid to lose them to the
| Soviet Union based purely on _potential achievements_. Some
| scientists even played this as a card to get hired by the US.
| renewiltord wrote:
| If you take the Kolmogorov Option you'd better be Kolmogorov.
| Besides the creature being ended was Nazism, not its
| components. Some of its component individuals had to be ended
| (and if necessary, humiliated) to end it but that was the
| means.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| The Soviets did the same. Wernher Von Braun was famously
| recruited despite his past. Top National Socialists were not
| only recruited for their skills, but also to deny their
| expertise from the opposing sphere. Many of the common soldiers
| and officers who were not in the same demand joined the Foreign
| Legion. Some of those continued on in Africa to become
| mercenaries.
|
| Otto Skorzeny allegedly worked for the Mossad after working
| with Nasser.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Skorzeny#Alleged_recruitm...
| machinestops wrote:
| Famous to the point of a song being written:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
| aguaviva wrote:
| _The Soviets did the same._
|
| And perhaps on larger scale in terms of raw headcount. But
| significantly, there were apparently no "rock stars" like
| Gehlen, von Braun, Skorzeny or Barbie in their pack. Nor did
| any of these characters end up (like the first two) leading
| mission-critical organizations/programs up until the 1960s.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Even in post-war West Germany, "denazification", e.g. excluding
| ex-nazis from roles in the new German society, was a failed
| policy that got discontinued after a few years.
| Yeul wrote:
| If memory serves the entire West German intelligence
| apparatus was run by ex Nazis.
|
| The BRD was like that famous Fawlty Towers sketch. "Don't
| mention the war!".
| psunavy03 wrote:
| It got sabotaged by the ex-Nazi West Germans, who realized
| they could use West German re-armament and NATO membership
| (which was needed against the Soviets) as leverage to
| pressure the Allies to drop denazification and look the other
| way at them pushing the "Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht."
| vkou wrote:
| [flagged]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I wonder from time-to-time how many Richmonders realize
| that the Union didn't burn down the town; the Confederacy
| did to deprive the Union of the munitions stores.
| Richmonders were trying to put the fire out because, well,
| it was destroying their homes.
|
| Portions of the city that were razed weren't rebuilt until
| into the Nineties (the 1990s).
|
| But somehow, a mythology clings on that the Union were the
| problem, not the people carrying the torches.
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| Key difference: Denazification was imposed on Germany from
| the Allies. There was no such force during reconstruction.
| vkou wrote:
| Half the purpose of reconstruction was purging
| Confederates from any position of political influence.
|
| Unfortunately, a campaign of terrorism that culminated in
| the crooked compromise of 1877 brought an end to that.
| yonaguska wrote:
| This is even wilder than that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_Morel
| zer8k wrote:
| Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to execute people with
| knowledge that would otherwise be useful to the enemy. If we
| didn't, the soviets would. There was a lot to learn from them
| that didn't have to do with their prior allegiances that proved
| valuable for weapons development, spycraft, and space
| exploration.
| waihtis wrote:
| It's only wild if you're incredibly naive and divide the world
| into "good" and "bad" guys.
|
| Before someone thinks I'm a nazi apologist, I want to clarify
| this is about making a point of the world being extremely grey,
| even in areas where you perceive the good guys to operate.
| ocschwar wrote:
| Makes more sense when you realize the purpose of Nazi hunting
| wasn't really to catch enough of them to establish some level
| of justice. It was to keep them closeted so they would not
| attempt a comeback. Before getting kidnapped to Israel,
| Eichmann was more than ready to be the spearhead of a resurgent
| Nazi movement.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| I'll ask for citations not because I am skeptical, but
| because I find the topic interesting. Thanks.
| ocschwar wrote:
| The most exemplary story was the killing of Herbert Kukurs.
| West Germany was about to apply a statute of limitations to
| war crimes, which would have emboldened Nazis to come out
| of the woodwork. To the Mossad found a Nazi and beat him to
| death.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| That's not exactly a wild thing; it was no secret at all that
| Werner von Braun was at the heart of the Apollo program while
| it was happening.
|
| The Soviets and British did the same thing, IIRC.
|
| The lesson is simple: if you're going to lose a war, lose a war
| as a guy who is good at something, because the new management
| will be a lot less likely to hold crimes against humanity
| against you.
| sybercecurity wrote:
| Even mentioned in a darkly humorous tone in the 1968 movie
| "Ice Station Zebra" (cold war thriller). The character played
| by Patrick McGoohan has a line: " The Russians put our camera
| made by _our_ German scientists and your film made by _your_
| German scientists into their satellite made by _their_ German
| scientists. "
| buildsjets wrote:
| I mean, Tom Lehrer had a whole song about it and everything.
| It was on the radio quite a bit at the time.
|
| Gather 'round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
|
| A man whose allegiance
|
| Is ruled by expedience.
|
| Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown,
|
| "Ha, Nazi, Schmazi, " says Wernher von Braun.
|
| http://www.protestsonglyrics.net/Humorous_Songs/Wernher-
| Von-...
| dllthomas wrote:
| https://tomlehrersongs.com/wernher-von-braun/ is perhaps a
| better link.
| Insanity wrote:
| Read this, this year:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333289-operation-paper...
| which is all about Operation Paperclip.
|
| I think it's a decent book. If you end up reading / liking this
| book, I'd also recommend her book "Nuclear War: A Scenario"
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/182733784-nuclear-war. Both
| are well researched, the second one (Nuclear War) was a more
| entertaining read, in a morbid kind of way.
| drewcoo wrote:
| See also Japanese Unit 731. War criminals make good weapons.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
| no_exit wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Cross_(Japanese_company)
|
| > Green Cross was founded in 1950 as Japan's first commercial
| blood bank and became a diversified international
| pharmaceutical company producing ethical drugs for delivery
| or administration by doctors and healthcare workers. Its
| founders included war criminals such as Masaji Kitano who
| performed torture and experiments on humans in the Japanese
| military's notorious Unit 731 during World War II. _Also
| serving as a consultant for the company was Murray Sanders,
| the American officer and physician who had petitioned for
| Kitano 's acquittal after the war_.
|
| > In the late 1980s, Green Cross and Takeshi Abe were at the
| center of a scandal in which up to 3,000 Japanese people
| contracted HIV through the distribution and use of blood
| products which were known to be unsafe.
| SirAllCaps wrote:
| Wildest case I've heard of is related to another renowned
| intelligence agency: https://archive.md/WwclV
| 486sx33 wrote:
| I think the term "volunteered" for the SS is a bit, lost in
| translation.
| rsynnott wrote:
| The SS was, generally, a volunteer thing; they did not
| conscript for the SS proper. The Wehrmacht was, at least by the
| period we're concerned with here, a conscript army, but the SS
| wasn't.
| tptacek wrote:
| He volunteered.
| RIMR wrote:
| You could read the article if you want to. It says that he
| voluntarily joined the SS Totenkopf division, committed
| atrocities at a concentration camp, and he openly stated that
| is biggest/only regret was that Germany lost the war...
| tptacek wrote:
| Point of order: it was never demonstrated that he directly
| committed atrocities at Gross-Rosen or Mauthausen (where he
| was never stationed). Of course, his work guarding prisoners
| there enabled those atrocities, as both the courts
| considering his case immediately pointed out.+
|
| He didn't say Germany losing was his "only" regret and he
| didn't say that openly --- he said that in a private session
| with the OPRF school board (the only citation we have for it
| --- I have no doubt he said it, given what his son Rainer
| wrote in our local newspaper at the time --- is an interview
| Soffer did with one of the school board members). He was not
| an out-and-proud Nazi or a public advocate for Germany.
|
| (To be clear: I think his case was handled properly by the
| authorities, and OPRF's protection of him after they
| discovered his Nazi past was not good.)
|
| + _Ironically, his combat service on the Eastern Front has
| more problematic documentation; he got a commendation for his
| involvement in the capture of 250 Soviet soldiers, and it 's
| tacitly understood that those soldiers were then killed._
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| This story has been up for three hours and every comment on it
| has either been flagged to death or is in the process of being
| downvoted into oblivion.
|
| I think it's an interesting story but I don't have a lot to
| comment on. This isn't the first time person with a dark history
| became a pillar of society and later was found out. It's human
| nature that people will defend those they think they know.
|
| It's not surprising that there would be insufficient evidence to
| have anything to charge him with in Germany.
| gambiting wrote:
| I just said I can't believe Americans were defending him and it
| got flagged, so......I don't actually know what that means.
| Never seen a comments section like this on HN.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| When you write your comment you have your intent in mind.
| However the readers often project their own ideas into your
| comments. You need to tread carefully with this subject
| matter. Try to be aware of what others may imagine you are
| saying. Next, write your comment in way that explicitly
| removes those possible misinterpretations.
|
| As an example: I haven't reviewed your other comments and I
| do not wish to discuss them.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Neo-nazis are a real problem on the internet, as I have been
| pointing out for many years.
| tptacek wrote:
| I live in Oak Park, and have been doing a bit of archival
| research about this (it's been politically relevant lately, for
| complicated reasons). Soffer's book ("Our Nazi") is very well
| written, better than you'd expect for what I assumed (wrongly)
| would be just a local interest story.
|
| This all happened back in 1982-1984. I don't think you're going
| to find a lot of living camp guards in the US work force today.
|
| The craziest detail about this story is that, in the early 1980s,
| there was an organized effort to pressure the White House and
| pass legislation to make it impossible to deport Nazis. The
| effort was led by a group of Baltic and Eastern European ethnic
| affinity groups, largely out of Chicago. They were called
| "Americans For Due Process", and their ambition was to pass
| legislation requiring something like an international Nuremberg
| Tribunal process in order to anyone deported.
|
| Reinhold Kulle, the specific Nazi in Soffer's story, was not a
| sympathetic case. He volunteered for the SS Totenkopf, guarded
| Gross-Rosen, assisted its evacuation to Mauthausen, lied about it
| when immigrating to the US, lied about the camp (claiming its
| victims were never beaten, shot, or killed) to investigators and
| in court, and ultimately confessed to those lies before being
| deported to West Germany, where he lived out his days (still
| collecting an OPRF pension!) as a free man.
|
| Other cases were more complicated. One person was almost deported
| before evidence was discovered conclusively showing he had been
| confined to a work camp for the duration of the war. Two others
| were deported to Soviet controlled countries where they had been
| sentenced to death in absentia.
| defen wrote:
| One thing that's not clear from the article (perhaps it's
| explained in the book) is why the school had his marriage
| certificate on file. Since it listed his SS rank and the fact
| that he worked at a concentration camp, I'm assuming the US
| immigration authorities did not see it. But then the question
| is ... clearly he realized that being a Nazi was frowned upon
| in the US, so why would he provide that document to the school?
| tptacek wrote:
| The book looks at that document as a sort of smoking gun,
| too. I think the simplest explanation is that Kulle didn't
| think the SS thing was a big deal, just a technicality he had
| to work around to get into the US, and that OPRF (our high
| school where he worked) didn't really know much about it
| either. It wasn't unusual for someone to have contemporaneous
| German documentation --- especially in Chicago, which was a
| hub for post-war immigration. Gross-Rosen in particular was
| not well known, even into the 1980s --- the centerpiece of
| the book is a sort of courtroom drama wherein Kulle's lawyer
| attempts to convince a judge that there wasn't much of
| anything untoward about the camp at all.
|
| So the short answer is probably that nobody looked too
| carefully at Kulle's documentation when he signed on to a
| low-level janitor's job at a high school.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| It's slightly more sinister than that. If you had to be a
| member of a Nazi organization to get ahead or get the
| government off your back because you might be viewed as
| politically unreliable the SS was a common choice. Members
| would do some paramilitary exercises now and then and be
| otherwise left alone. For things like _Einsatzgruppe_ or
| _Totenkopf_ you had to volunteer. The guy knew that well
| enough.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes. Also: that's common knowledge now, but probably
| wasn't in 1959 (certainly the distinction wasn't apparent
| in newspaper articles of the time). I don't think it was
| crazy for OPRF to assume, regardless of any documentation
| Kulle provided when he was hired, that he'd been vetted
| at immigration, and wasn't a war criminal. Of course, it
| was crazy for administrators to come to his defense in
| 1983 when the details were flushed out! But the village
| as a whole appears to have wanted him gone.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| After 911, public discussion shifted from totalitarianism to
| terrorism.
|
| I was raised long before this shift. Going by the comments here,
| many readers of HN were not.
|
| Today's equivalent, in the public's view, of this school janitor
| would be a janitor who joined ISIS in his youth, and stuck around
| for the beheadings.
|
| In a couple decades, society will lose its preoccupation with
| terrorism, too. Then we'll all get to read "so he was in ISIS,
| big deal" comments together.
| tptacek wrote:
| We didn't "lose preoccupation" with Nazis; they just all died.
|
| _Later_
|
| The quotes here probably make this sound harsher than I meant
| it to! I'm just saying: it's harder today to make Nazi
| immigrants salient, because those people are all around 100
| years old now.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| That is a large part of it, but the shift was underway 20
| years ago. Villains from WWII naturally get less airtime
| during a time when the public wants to mentally process WTC
| or Bataclan.
| tptacek wrote:
| 20 years ago was Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. Maybe
| this is just an American perspective? We certainly didn't
| spend a lot of mental energy on Bataclan.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| My comment was possibly too terse to make sense. Are we
| both referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_
| 2015_Paris_attacks?
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| IDK, turn on showdead and you'll see plenty below
| danans wrote:
| It's not terribly surprising that a former Nazi guard would be
| able to immigrate to the US and integrate with American society.
|
| Nazism and its adjacent movements and organizations like the KKK
| have been a persistent background feature of the US cultural
| landscape for a long time [1]. The post Civil-war American
| racism/segregation model (AKA Jim Crow) was seen by the Nazis as
| a model for their own society. There were and still are many who
| agree with many aspects of the ideology, especially if they
| aren't specifically associated with the term "Nazi".
|
| WW2 may have caused overtly Nazi-associated movements to fall out
| of mainstream regard, but as examples like the individual in the
| article demonstrate, it wasn't that hard for him to hide his
| level of involvement in the Nazi party, especially in suburban
| America, which was itself born of America's own internal racist
| convulsion. Those who grew up in American suburbs during that
| time period are aware of the persistent background racism and
| anti-Semitism they harbored. This was a society primed to give a
| well-spoken and hard working white immigrant a huge benefit of
| the doubt, as it demonstrably did.
|
| In the end, it seems like he was legally deported based on the
| law that no Nazi camp guards can immigrate to the US, not because
| the society itself hadn't found a comfortable place for him.
|
| 1. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/nazi-
| town-...
| tptacek wrote:
| Nah. He didn't have to hide anything. He was asked once, when
| he immigrated, if he'd been a member of the SS (we explicitly
| disallow immigration by SS members), and he lied then. He was
| never really asked again, until 1981, and then was more or less
| immediately deported. Over his 30 odd years working here, there
| wasn't ever any concerted effort to protect him, until the very
| end.
| danans wrote:
| > He was never really asked again, until 1981, and then was
| more or less immediately deported.
|
| That's my point - it was relatively easy for someone like him
| not to raise suspicion in 1950s American society, because the
| society was very open to accepting and integrating someone
| like him. Like a "Don't ask, don't tell" for Nazis.
|
| It finally took a government commission nearly 30 years to
| find out the truth about his past and deport him.
|
| Contrast this with the very active threats we hear today from
| some of the loudest political voices to deport _legal_
| migrants to the US from Haiti.
|
| Both the post-war German migrants of the 1950s and the legal
| Haitian migrants of today are escaping war and violence,
| working at manual labor jobs that Americans won't take, and
| economically revitalizing previously declining communities by
| starting small businesses, yet the tone toward the Haitians
| today is starkly different than it was for the Germans.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm pushing back on the idea that Oak Park was open to
| Nazis in the 1950s and 60s. It was not. What there was was
| a rapid influx of Germans after the war, and not even 1/4th
| the knowledge we have today about the Holocaust and
| Germany's conduct during the war. The fact is: people in
| Oak Park had the (reasonable!) assumption that if you were
| allowed to immigrate into the US, you were not a war
| criminal.
|
| Had Kulle been _openly_ a Nazi during his time here, things
| would have gone very differently. But it basically never
| came up until the very end, and, when it did, people were
| extremely squicked out about it.
|
| For whatever it's worth: I'm guessing our politics are very
| similar. Despite the very grim consequences for some of the
| people we deported, I think we generally made the right
| decision to do so. And I have no doubt that at every point
| from 1948 through 2024 that a Haitian immigrant would have
| had a far different experience in Chicagoland than a German
| one.
| danans wrote:
| > For whatever it's worth: I'm guessing our politics are
| very similar.
|
| I intuited that, which is a reason why I think this is a
| worthwhile debate vs debating with someone who doesn't
| have similar basic values about our shared humanity.
| Thanks for your thoughtful responses!
|
| > I'm pushing back on the idea that Oak Park was open to
| Nazis in the 1950s and 60s. It was not. What there was
| was a rapid influx of Germans after the war, and not even
| 1/4th the knowledge we have today about the Holocaust and
| Germany's conduct during the war. The fact is: people in
| Oak Park had the (reasonable!) assumption that if you
| were allowed to immigrate into the US, you were not a war
| criminal.
|
| Clearly, once it's known that someone is a Nazi war
| criminal nobody wants them, in no small part because no
| community wants to be associated with the Nazis in
| particular, but yes also because Nazism is deplorable,
| and it is the law that Nazi war criminals must be
| deported.
|
| I can't look into the hearts of people of 1950-1980s Oak
| Park to know what they really thought or felt. I can't
| demonstrate what motivated them to accept migrants
| whether goodwill, humanity or any other number of
| factors.
|
| However, arguably WW2 caused people to be repulsed by the
| word Nazi, their actions, and their associated imagery,
| more than the nuances of the ideology itself.
|
| That incongruity persists, and there is still widespread
| ignorance about the connections - both explicit and
| thematic - between Nazi ideology and America's own
| history of racism, as recent high profile events in
| politics and society have demonstrated.
|
| > And I have no doubt that at every point from 1948
| through 2024 that a Haitian immigrant would have had a
| far different experience in Chicagoland than a German
| one.
|
| That's my main point. It is easier for a person like this
| to pass in the specific context of American white
| suburban society if nothing else is known about them, vs
| someone who comes from a different racial and ethnic
| group.
|
| Conversely, it is not a coincidence that the false claims
| about Haitian migrants in Ohio were started by a local
| Neo-Nazi group.
|
| Overall, I feel Oak Park should be commended for how open
| and welcoming it was to this person, while not knowing
| his true history. The same charity ought to be extended
| to anyone fleeing strife and willing to work hard,
| contribute, and follow the law. (and PS I know I'm
| preaching to the choir of you).
| tptacek wrote:
| One bit of context I bring to this discussion is that
| I've spent 6 months reading the archives of our local
| papers --- not for this Nazism thing, but for work I'm
| doing on zoning reform (we're on the cusp of eliminating
| single-family zoning villagewide, which will be huge).
|
| Another bit of context is that there's a modern political
| dimension to some of the claims being made about 1980s
| antisemitism. If you're not familiar with Oak Park, it is
| _very_ liberal; think of it as the Berkeley+ of
| Chicagoland. There is a deep division between activist
| progressive Oak Park and normie Democrat Oak Park (I 'm
| the latter), and, for obvious reasons, the last year that
| division has involved Israel and a rhetorical conflict
| between people concerned about Islamophobia and people
| concerned about antisemitism++. So, I read claims that
| Oak Park was distinctively antisemitic in that light.
|
| Generally, I think Oak Park was _not_ distinctively
| antisemitic over the time periods we 're discussing
| (1950-1980, when Kulle worked here, and 1981-1984, during
| which he was deported). It was better than most of the
| surrounding communities. But: _everywhere_ was worse
| about antisemitism than they are now, which is a subtlety
| these conversations tend to miss.
|
| So, it's true that, for instance, both the private
| athletic clubs in Oak Park disallowed Jewish members
| throughout most of the time period we're talking about
| --- like clubs everywhere. The local council of churches,
| a player in the newspaper war about Kulle, did not
| include Jewish congregations (or Catholics, for that
| matter). The sort of ambient 20th century antisemitism
| you'd expect to see was definitely on display here.
|
| But Oak Park didn't see itself as prejudiced against
| Jewish people; in fact, a huge part of its identity,
| especially from 1965 onwards but also prior to that, was
| about us being at the vanguard of equity and
| inclusiveness. Soffer is right to take VOP to task for
| never living up to that narrative. But at the same time,
| you can't have that narrative and also actively hide a
| Nazi war criminal.
|
| I think the reality here is really simple: in the
| American system, it was simply not Oak Park's job to
| determine whether Reinhold Kulle was a Nazi war criminal.
| Everyone here assumed the federal government had done
| that job. Nobody probed Kulle; everyone accepted his
| story that he'd served honorably in the German army (he
| lied to immigration and said he served in the Wehrmacht,
| but the "Wehrmacht" vs "Waffen-SS" distinction probably
| wouldn't have even been legible to most Oak Parkers of
| the time, the way it is to us now).
|
| This is what historians are talking about when they worry
| about "presentism".
|
| + _ironically, the muni that originated racially-
| motivated single-family zoning!_
|
| ++ _:why-not-both:_
| danans wrote:
| > I've spent 6 months reading the archives of our local
| papers --- not for this Nazism thing, but for work I'm
| doing on zoning reform (we're on the cusp of eliminating
| single-family zoning villagewide, which will be huge).
|
| Thanks for the context. I support your cause to end
| racially exclusionary zoning!
|
| > This is what historians are talking about when they
| worry about "presentism".
|
| If I understand what presentism means, I don't think I
| committed it in my argument.
|
| Contrasting the openness of the US at a policy level to
| immigrants like Kulle in the 1950s vs the threats to the
| status of Haitian TPS holders being made today isn't
| applying a standard from today to the past.
|
| Rather, it's applying a just standard from the past to
| today.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, you didn't! I don't really think Soffer does, either,
| but it's an issue that's sort of bound up with the
| analysis that follows his book. Today, excusing someone
| for serving in the Waffen-SS would be coded differently,
| and more harshly, than it was in 1950 --- not because
| people in the 1950s were O.K. with the Waffen-SS, but
| because they knew less about it. And it's subtle, because
| the United States Government did know, and cared a lot
| (but was deeply fallible, then as now) --- but here we're
| talking about a story where the federal government
| harshly cracked down on the "Oak Park Nazi", and his
| defenders were just random people who were, I think,
| mostly ignorant about the issues at play.
|
| People look back at like 1959 Oak Park and say it was
| wild this guy wasn't reported to immigration as soon as
| he turned in his marriage certificate with the
| Reichsadler and "Gross-Rosen" on it, but the
| superintendent of OPRF high school almost certainly had
| no idea what the hell Gross-Rosen was; even the OSI had
| to go consult experts to work that out.
|
| I'm a little bit judging other people --- not you --- for
| judging local civic officials for not meeting the
| standards of a society where everybody has virtually all
| the world's knowledge in their pocket at all times.
| robjwells wrote:
| Eric Lichtblau wrote a good book on the resettlement of Nazis in
| the US, beyond the usual Paperclip names, called The Nazis Next
| Door.
|
| Here's a talk he gave at UCSB on the topic in 2015:
| https://youtu.be/eP3srgksUqU
| RIMR wrote:
| What a complete moral failure that this man never saw a prison
| cell of his own.
| tristan957 wrote:
| There is a great documentary on Netflix called "The Devil Next
| Door." It covers a similar story.
| mewse-hn wrote:
| "Our lead custodian keeps everything spotless and is a fanatic
| about stopping underage drinking during the school dances - he's
| a real nazi about it"
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