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
In the novel Decameron, Giovanni Bocaccio wrote about life in the mid 14th century time of the Black Death. So how do we spend our time in a similar period? [Oliver Pollak, Ph.D]
Escape to Wyoming, my personal Decameron Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Lifestyles, Oliver Pollak, Travel and Food
Rips spent over two decades at the Flea. Dealers, pickers, and vendors had colorful names, backgrounds and vignettes — Jokkho, the Dane, the Diops, the Prophet, the Cowboy, Kervorkian and the more normative, Paul, Frank, Bobby, Mike, Morris, Sophia, and Ethel, the latter being a specialist in Judaica, especially Menorahs, who started as a man and transformed into a woman. The author is the standout character. [Oliver B. Pollak]
Flea markets, bargains, and the obsession of collecting Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak
Now, because of the Coronavirus, Zooming distance learning education is mandatory. My son teaches reading in the Berkeley school system, a few minutes from his home. Erika, his spouse, teaches first grade in Oakland. All summer they speculated about how school would reopen. Would they teach “live” or online? [Oliver B. Pollak]
Schooling during the COVID-19 era Read More »
Oliver Pollak, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA
The author, born in 1990, earned her Mathematics degree from Middlebury College and completed an MFA in fiction at Columbia University in 2018. The novel is set in crisis plagued New York around 9/11 2001. The author drops almost poetic hints; “Lower Manhattan opened its gates to the general public again…a light northward breeze perfumed the air with drywall dust and soot…we looked south and saw the great gap tooth against the gullet of the sky.” We were at war, from where would the next terror come? [Oliver Pollak, PhD)
A book reviewer’s search for Jewish stories Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak, Travel and FoodAuthors want to be read. We write because we are compelled and think we have something to say. Authors need readers, publishers need purchasers and subscribers. The SDJW editor invites readers to “Leave a Comment” and post it. Comments are usually favorable. Readers can also correspond directly by email. [Oliver B. Pollak]
Yes, indeed, we get and want letters Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Business & Finance, Oliver Pollak, San Diego County
This story is built around 50 delicate letters, most written on the back of German period piece postcards: including garden scenes of fairy tales gnomes, elfs, leprechauns, and teddy bears designed for children. The letters, starting in February 1939 were by Max Lichtwitz, a Berlin lawyer, to his six-year-old son Heinz or Heini Lichtwitz, the future Henry Foner. They evoke love, longing, and irreparable loss. Max, a widower, sent his six-year son Heinz to England to live in Swansea, Wales with Morris and Winifred Foner. Max, his new wife and stepdaughter never got out of Germany, and were murdered in Auschwitz. [Oliver Pollak]
Postcards and the Kindertransport Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson covers the challenges Winston Churchill faced during the first two years of the war, from May 1940 to the end of 1941. Churchill grappled with the Nazi blitzkrieg toppling France and other Allies and the rescue of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk and other locations. Then came the Battle of Britain as Spitfires and Hurricanes, radar and Bletchley Park intelligence interfered with Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe. The Nazis blitzed London and other English cities for eight months and five days. Blessedly Hitler’s anticipated land invasion never occurred. [Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D]
When England was going it alone, there was Churchill Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Oliver Pollak
She did it her way By Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — The June/July 2020 issue of The Wall Street Journal Magazine contains a fascinating story by Will Friedwald with photography by Henry Leutwyler — “Sinatra’s Little Brown Book.” The article heralds Leutwyler’s just published Hi There!, a collection of 69 photographs of the address
My mother’s and Frank Sinatra’s address books Read More »
International, Jewish History, Lifestyles, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Oliver Pollak, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA
You gotta love this book. Page 1 leads with my favorite “Ferguson” (shayn fergessen) joke which I have retold tirelessly for years. Fermaglich reveals that Winona Ryder, born in Winona, Minnesota and currently playing the role of Evelyn Finkel in the Netflix series The Plot Against America, based on Philip Roth’s 2004 novel of the same name, was born Winona Laura Horowitz. But this book is not about jokes and celebrities but about the real choices that the nearly three million Jews who came to America between 1880 and 1920 had to make to feel comfortable and make progress in America. [Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D]
Book Review: A Rosenberg by any other name Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak, USA
The plague has interested me for over 60 years. On my shelves I have Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year 1665; William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (1976); John Aberth, the author of The Black Death, The Great Mortality of 1348-1350 (2005), the first of his several studies on mass mortality; Teofilo F. Ruiz, The Terror of History, on the Uncertainties of Life in Western Civilization (2011); and Rachel Kadish, The Weight of Ink (2017). I knew people who suffered through the 1918 Influenza epidemic. And I know three of the above mentioned authors. One of the first books I received as a gift was Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. [Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D]
Books, Internet tell of plagues through history Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak, USA
Stalin ruled from the mid-1920s to 1953. Vladimir Berger was born in 1931. In 1937, at the age of 6, his father, Iosif Shmulevich Berger, was arrested by the secret police. Vladimir, his mother and sister never saw him again. The family went from being reasonably well off to selling what they had to make ends meet. [Book review by Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D]
‘Fate of Our Fathers’ tells horror of Stalin’s purges Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak
Gold was discovered in January 1848 at Sutter Creek near Coloma, in what became El Dorado County in 1850. Five chapters focus on thirteen Northern California counties. Patterns emerge. Jews were attracted by the opportunities posed by the discovery of gold, but they did not go into staking claims and mining, they went into commerce, shifting from itinerant peddling into storefronts. Enterprising immigrants provided much needed supplies including dry goods at mercantile stores. Miner settlements went from canvas tents to wooden structures and ended with a degree of permanence and optimism, brick and stone buildings. Some boomtowns became ghost towns and were transformed into State Parks and Historic places. The magic word, according to Fred Rosenbaum, historian of Jewish California is “retail.” [Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D]
A history of Gold Country Jews in pictures Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak, USA
Identical books with different titles and different covers introduce bookish mystery and confusion. Such is the case of No Place to Lay One’s Head and A Bookshop in Berlin by Françoise Frenkel which first appeared in 1945 as Rien où poser sa tête. The revival of an overlooked book has a special attraction. Publishers appeal to sensibilities of prospective readers through alluring titles and cover art. [Oliver B. Pollak, PhD]
1945 Holocaust memoir rediscovered Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak
… They first performed at the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum in 2019. This year, in observance of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp they will premiere the first public performance of a piece composed for them by Laurence Sherr of Kennesaw State University in Georgia. Sherr has a specialty in music of the Holocaust. The program will be cosponsored by the German and Italian Counsels of Los Angeles. Audiences should be prepared for remarkable music, by a remarkable globe-trotting couple. [Oliver Pollak, PhD]
Jewish melody infuses German, U.S. chamber music Read More »
Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Oliver Pollak