Felix Pollak

[3] A Jew and liberal anti-fascist, he studied law and theater at the University of Vienna before emigrating to the United States in 1938[2] following the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich.

He briefly worked as a door-to-door salesman in New York City before enrolling at the University of Buffalo, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in library science in 1941.

After the war, he enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he received a master's degree in library science in 1949.

His most well-known poem, "Speaking: The Hero", has frequently been cited as a forceful example of Vietnam war protest poetry, though it was written in response to the Nazi concentration camps and the bombing of Hiroshima.

[2][4][6] Since 1994, the University of Wisconsin Press has annually awarded a poetry prize named after Pollak.