U.S. Deports Man Accused of Lying About His Nazi SS Past

Reinhold Kulle, accused of lying about his Nazi past when he entered the United States 30 years ago, was deported Monday to West Germany after a U.S. Supreme Court justice refused his emergency appeal, authorities said.

A federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed late Monday that Kulle had left Chicago on a flight for West Germany. The official said he did not know if any relatives accompanied Kulle and said a statement about the deportation would be released by the government today.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens cleared the way for Kulle’s deportation when he rejected the appeal in Washington. Earlier in the day, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago denied Kulle’s request for a stay of the deportation order.

Kulle, 66, a German citizen, was taken into custody Friday at his home in west suburban Brookfield and held over the weekend at the U.S. Metropolitan Correctional Center, said Kulle’s lawyer, Charles Nixon.

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials did not return telephone calls made to confirm Kulle’s departure.

24 Years With School District

A man answering Kulle’s home telephone Monday night referred all questions to Kulle’s lawyer, who did not answer his telephone. Earlier Monday, Nixon had said he assumed that Kulle was on his way to the airport.

Kulle lost his job as chief custodian in the Oak Park-River Forest School District in 1984 when his past as a member of the Nazi SS became known. He had worked for the school district for 24 years.

Kulle was accused of lying on his 1957 immigration application by failing to note that he had served in the SS unit, Heinrich Himmler’s elite volunteer corps, and was a guard at a Nazi slave labor camp during World War II.

Kulle has conceded that he was a guard but says he had virtually no contact with prisoners.

The Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations contends that Kulle joined the Waffen SS in 1940 and from 1942 to 1945 served as an armed guard and group leader of prisoners at Gross-Rosen concentration camp in his native Silesia, now part of Poland.

The government maintains that Kulle participated in persecuting prisoners, that he failed to reveal his service in the SS and that he misrepresented his wartime activities to obtain permission to enter the United States in 1957.