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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Books, Internet tell of plagues through history

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]

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

‘Fate of Our Fathers’ tells horror of Stalin’s purges

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]

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

A history of Gold Country Jews in pictures

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]

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

1945 Holocaust memoir rediscovered

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]

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

Jewish melody infuses German, U.S. chamber music

… 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]

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Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Oliver Pollak

‘A Hidden Life’ and ‘The Sound of Music’

Opposition to Nazi power is a theme of two stories set in the Austrian Alps. The musical The Sound of Music by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II featuring the von Trapp Family Singers appeared on Broadway in 1959. The 1965 film starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer broke Gone with the Wind box office records. It ran 174 minutes and won five Academy awards. The sound track sold over 20 million albums. It was loved. [Oliver B. Pollak]

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International, Oliver Pollak, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Posthumous Holocaust memoir a family affair

Mendek Rubin was born in 1924 in Jaworzno, Poland, a town with over 2,000 Jews, about 15 miles from Auschwitz. He died in Carmel in 2012. When his daughter Myra was putting his papers in order she came across a manuscript In Quest of the Eternal Sunshine. It was a surprise and not a surprise. It was a surprise to find it, but she had already helped her father edit it decades earlier. She worked on the manuscript for a few days but the task was incompatible with raising her two children. And, “in the intervening years” she had “completely forgotten it existed.” [Oliver B. Pollak]

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

Book Review: ‘Jews in Medicine’

Jews in Medicine, Contributions to Health and Healing through the Age by Ronald L. Eisenberg Jerusalem and New York: Urim Publications, 2019, 464 pages, $34.95 By Oliver B. Pollak JACKSON HOLE, Wyoming — This 464-page encyclopedic reference book starts with the Talmud and comes into the present including still living practitioners. The author identifies Jewish

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak, Science, Medicine, & Education

Feature story leads to an honor for his Opa’s patient

By Oliver B. Pollak JACKSON HOLE, Wyoming — My story “Hannover to Terezin, roundtrip please,” appeared on San Diego Jewish World on June 2, 2018. It has had remarkable unexpected consequences. My interest in Theresienstadt (the German name for the Czech Terezin) started in the 1980s when my mother gave me my grandfather’s papers.  They

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International, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak

New Mexico’s Holocaust and Intolerance Museum

Story an photos by Oliver B. Pollak ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico – We’re in Albuquerque for the 75th birthday of Dr. Steve, the father of my daughter-in-law Erika. Steve’s wine cellar with red wines dating back to the early 1980s was an added pleasure. New Mexico’s Jewish history is more complicated than the rest of American

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Jewish History, Oliver Pollak, Travel and Food, USA

Old books rivet attention at Oakland center

By Oliver B. Pollak OAKLAND, California – The 52nd California International Antiquarian Book Fair met at the Marriott City Center in Oakland.  About 160 booksellers from around the world had brought their high priced prizes; a 1632 Shakespeare volume for $450,000, a Gutenberg Bible leaf (ca 1455), $98,000, Sir Isaac Newton’s 1704 Opticks $120,000, and

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak, USA

Lawrence Halprin’s West Coast kibbutz: The Sea Ranch

By Oliver B. Pollak SAN FRANCISCO — In 2004 my law partner and I went to Washington DC for a conference. Our sightseeing included The Watergate, Jewish War Veterans Museum, and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial on the Mall. The Memorial first conceived in 1960, authorized in 1974 with Lawrence Halprin’s winning design went unfunded

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Oliver Pollak, Travel and Food, USA