Local author shares the history of Southwest’s immigrants

By Jessie Kirk

The Southwest Community Connection, Jan 29, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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On a trip to New York Polina Olsen visited the lower east side of the city where her grandparents had once lived and worked. She found a walking guide of the city and toured the streets absorbing the history that surrounded her.

Back home in John’s Landing, Olsen began to wonder about the history of where she lived.

“I’ve been interested in the immigrant story for a long time, partly because I feel so bad that I never asked my own grandparents their story,” she said.

Borrowing a digital camera from work, Olsen began taking photographs of interesting buildings in Lair Hill.

The photographs she took and the information she assembled from her subsequent research and interviews helped Olsen write two books: “A Walking Tour of Historic Jewish Portland,” and “The Immigrants’ Children: Jewish and Italian Memories of Old South Portland.” She published the books herself after creating her own company, Smart Talk Publications. Through the knowledge she’s gained, Olsen now guides sold-out tours of South Portland once a month during the summer.

“The tours are extremely popular…last summer I had to turn people away,” she said saying that the best part is that “there is always someone who has their own stories to share.”

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