Oliver Pollak

Oliver Polla

Oliver B. Pollak, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska Omaha, and a lawyer, is a correspondent now based in Richmond, California.

His books, available on Amazon, include:

*A State of Readers: Nebraska’s Carnegie Libraries
* A Year at the Sorbonne: A Proustian Life
*Conflict in Vietnam: An Historical Perspective
*Empires in Collision
*Jewish Life in Omaha and Lincoln: A Photographic History
*Nebraska Courthouses: Contention, Compromise and Community
*Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe
*Theses and Dissertations on Southern Africa
*To Educate and Serve: The Centennial History of Creighton University School of Law, 1904-2004
*University of Nebraska at Omaha  (With Les Valentine)
*Welcome to Omaha

He also contributed to
*Journal of Burma Studies Vol 3: Rise of a Mainland Trading State
*Western States Jewish History, Vol XXXIII, Number 2

Books and Films – Paul Newman, Steven Spielberg, and the Second World War

By Oliver B. Pollak TETON VILLAGE, Wyoming — I watched The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film on Amazon Prime. There were four of us in the living room, that cut it down to $5 each. I had no intention of writing about it. I got a birthday gift in November, Paul Newman, The Extraordinary Life […]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Celebrities, Oliver Pollak, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

Making Cards for Jewish Holidays — Hanukkah Cards a la Carte

By Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D. RICHMOND, California — Hanukkah is virtually here. You have no cards. Oy vey. Think creatively. Repurpose and recycle those New Year and Passover greeting cards you got as donation inducements from the myriad of worthy Jewish charities. Hanukkah is after all a holiday when you make do with what you

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Jewish Religion, Oliver Pollak

Daily Life, Obituaries and Last Rites in the Age of COVID

By Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D. RICHMOND, California — COVID has changed how we mourn. Attending funerals in temples, synagogues, and decamping to the cemetery were often followed by a meal of consolation and sitting shiva. Out of town family labored to attend. Minyan and yahrzeit mark the calendar. COVID made zooming and streaming funerals commonplace

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Lifestyles, Oliver Pollak

The Virtual New Book Tour—Zoom, Stream, YouTube, Audio, Print, and Film

Joshua Lambert, The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, and Postwar American Literature (Yale University Press, 2022) By Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D. RICHMOND, California — On Sunday, December 11, 2022 at 2 p.m. about 40 people zoomed into Josh Lambert’s presentation on his new book The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, and Postwar American Literature (Yale Univ Press,

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak

After-Effects of Children Witnessing War

Yalom’s goal was “to understand the effects of…wartime experience on children living in Europe and the United States.” Her six friends provided intimate vignettes of terror, trauma, aerial bombing, bomb shelters, and hunger. They endured and became accomplished, but not unscarred, They are likely “the last individuals who can remember World War II” and they will soon “vanish.” She explored the concept of witnesses in her 2015 work, Compelled to Witness, Women Memoirs of the French Revolution. [Oliver Pollak

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak

‘Western States Jewish History’ Now Semi-Annual and Peer-Reviewed

After a year’s absence, Western States Jewish History, a half-century-old journal, has made its reappearance in a new format.  No longer a quarterly, the journal will be published semi-annually by Texas Tech University Press, under the editorship of Jonathan L. Friedmann, professor of Jewish Music History at the Academy for Jewish Religion-California in Los Angeles. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak

Books That I Declined to Review

When I read a new book I want to turn my hours of page turning into a review. I have done this hundreds of times. Even compulsion has its limits. I list unpublished reviews in my 18,000 word resume under “Unsubmitted.” They were not rejected by an editor, they were never sent to one. Until yesterday it contained three books published between 2007-2014, and now has increased by 33 percent to four titles, totaling 1323 pages. I’m a non-fiction reviewer wary of speculation, creative non-fiction, and historical fiction. [Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak

Pandemic Postcard Messages, 1918-1920

The Jewish Welfare Board was created on April 9, 1917, three days after the U.S. declared war on Germany. It wanted to provide services to Jewish troops similar to what Catholic servicemen received from the Knights of Columbus and Protestants from the YMCA. In 1919, after the war was over, the JWB printed tens of thousands of these reassuring cards depicting a grinning doughboy and distributed them to servicemen to send to family and friends. [Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D]

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Jewish History, Lifestyles, Oliver Pollak, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Growth of Jewish Communities Promoted in the Early 20th Century

The headline in the adjoining news clipping is hype. “May” is not “will” or “shall.” Booster describes real estate developers, hucksters and visionaries who wanted to profit from growing communities and increases in real estate prices. Saul Voorsanger, who emigrated from Holland with his wife Sarah in 1893, promoted the growth of the Jewish population. He was a salesman and publicist and the brother of Temple Emanu-El’s Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger. The rabbi started Emanu-El, San Francisco’s weekly Jewish newspaper in 1895 and died in 1908. Sol, Saul or S. became editor. During 1912 several newspapers reported Voorsanger’s visiting chambers of commerce in San Diego, Visalia, Fresno, Modesto, Kings, San Joaquin, and Dinuba. He solicited advertising for a special 75,000 copy edition of Emanu-El to recruit better-off Russian Jews to buy and farm California land, a chimera. [Oliver B. Pollak]

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Jewish History, Oliver Pollak, USA

Thoughts on Organizing: Letter to a Younger Scholar

I started contributing to San Diego Jewish World in November 2017. About 100,000 words later this is my 102nd story. The ingredients are facts, imagination, inspiration, rigor, memory and the compulsion to write. Wife Karen and editor Don are faithful and critical readers. [Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Lifestyles, Oliver Pollak, Science, Medicine, & Education

The Vietnam Generation: A Personal Reflection

It’s the 4th of July and 60 years since, at the age of 17 while in high school, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve. My parents, refugees from Germany and Austria, reluctantly gave their consent. My family wore British and German uniforms in WWI, in WWII English, Czech and Theresienstadt garb. [Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D]

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International, Lifestyles, Oliver Pollak, San Diego County, USA