Oliver Pollak

[caption id="attachment_104750" align="alignright" width="100"] Oliver Polla[/caption]

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:

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*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

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The Personal Power of History

In the early 1970s while teaching at the University of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe since independence in 1980), I interviewed African labor and farmer union leaders while researching the 1948 General Strike and the African Farmers Union. The interviews were in English, Shona, and Sindebele. I hired two undergraduate history majors to assist me with the African languages and cross-cultural social protocols. One of them, Misheck Sibanda completed a Ph.D. in History at Birmingham University and returned to Zimbabwe, served as the Chief Cabinet Secretary to President Robert Mugabe and Emmerson Mnangagwa, and recently retired after 17 years of service. The second student, Kevin Gumbo, became a teacher. [Oliver B. Pollak]

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International, Oliver Pollak, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Independent Scholars Offer 31 Essays on the Covid Pandemic

In September Dorothy L. Parker, President of San Diego Independent Scholars and project editor, reached out and invited likeminded independent scholar organizations to participate in a writing and art project about Covid-19 experiences. The result is a collection of 31 essays about  pandemic experiences, thoughts, impressions and history. The writers represented a range of backgrounds, academic disciplines, and perspectives. They were seasoned and experienced, most over 65. [Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Lifestyles, Oliver Pollak

Food, pandemics, and heat waves

Our editor has opened SDJW pages to contributors of  fiction. What follows is true, but has the hallmarks of incredulity. We are wending our Pandemic way from August in Wyoming with the lowest Covid rate in the nation, to Richmond with a detour staying with my sister and brother in law in Laguna Woods. It is 2 pm and 104 degrees outside, and today, Sunday, is predicted to be 108 with “Very Unhealthy Air Quality.” [Oliver B. Pollak]

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Lifestyles, Oliver Pollak, Travel and Food, USA

Flea markets, bargains, and the obsession of collecting

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]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak

A book reviewer’s search for Jewish stories

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)

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak, Travel and Food

Yes, indeed, we get and want letters

Authors 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]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Business & Finance, Oliver Pollak, San Diego County

Postcards and the Kindertransport

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]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak

When England was going it alone, there was Churchill

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]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Oliver Pollak

My mother’s and Frank Sinatra’s address books

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

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International, Jewish History, Lifestyles, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Oliver Pollak, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

Book Review: A Rosenberg by any other name

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]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak, USA