Mildred Fish Harnack was the only American woman executed by Hitler during World War II.
1 June 1905: Milwaukee, Ward 16, Milwaukee, Wisconsin;
In the 1910 census Mildred (age 7) was the daughter of Wm C Fish, again in Milwaukee Ward 16, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States.[2]
24 March 1920: Montgomery, Maryland; 6301 Raymond Street, Rents Home; Occupation of Fred: Lawyer
A cenotaph was installed for the Harnacks after the war by Arvid’s older brother Falk, a member of the White Rose resistance group, at Zehlendorf Cemetery. [4]
"After the war, the Red Orchestra became a silent footnote to history. Even though the Soviets were America’s allies during World War II, they quickly became enemies as an Iron Curtain dropped across Europe. Instead of being hailed as patriots who tried to stop Hitler and end the war, Mildred, Arvid and the rest of the Red Orchestra were considered traitors because they were Communists. In the last decade or so, however, that’s changed and Mildred Harnack has been featured in books and documentaries. In Wisconsin schools, September 16 is celebrated as Mildred Harnack Day. It’s her birthday."[5]
"Across the Atlantic, Mildred’s family knew nothing about the trial or even her arrest. Two of her siblings lived in Wisconsin, another in Maryland. The last letter she’d sent to them was dated August 14, 1942, enclosed in an envelope with a Swiss postmark. It was a carefully worded, enigmatic missive. “Despite our being separated,” Mildred wrote, “let’s not be worried and anxious.”"[6]
"Mildred Fish was born and raised on the west side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to William C. Fish, a teacher, and Georgina Fish (née Hesketh); she had three siblings. As a young woman, she learned to speak, write, and read German. She initially attended West Division High School (now Milwaukee High School of the Arts); after her father's death, the family moved to Washington, D.C., and she finished her last year at Western High School. In 1919, she began studying at George Washington University and remained there for two years, using family savings to pay the attendance fees. In 1921, Mildred Fish matriculated at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. During her first year, she worked for the Wisconsin State Journal as a film and drama critic to support herself. She stayed at a rooming house popular with journalists and writers, but left after facing some mild prejudice, which caused her to change her major from journalism to humanities, then later to English literature. In 1922, she became a staff writer for the Wisconsin Literary Magazine. On 22 June 1925, Mildred Fish was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities. Her senior thesis was "A Comparison of Chapman's and Pope's Translations of the Iliad with the Original". She stayed for further study and was awarded a Master of Arts degree in English on 6 August 1925. In 1926, Fish studied and worked as a lecturer on German literature at the Milwaukee State Normal School (now the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee). In the same year, she met the jurist Arvid Harnack, a Rockefeller Fellow from Germany. Arvid Harnack had received his doctorate in law in 1924 and completed postgraduate studies in Hamburg and the London School of Economics before receiving a Rockefeller scholarship to study in America. They were engaged on 6 June 1926, and wed on 7 August 1926 in a ceremony at her brother's farm near the village of Brooklyn, Wisconsin, after which Mildred used the hyphenated "Fish-Harnack" as her married surname. On 28 September 1928, Arvid Harnack returned to Germany as his fellowship had ended. From 1928 to 1929, Mildred Fish-Harnack taught English and American literature at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. On 2 June 2 1929, Mildred Fish-Harnack migrated to Jena in Germany, where she spent her first year living with the Harnack family. Although Mildred Fish-Harnack spent most of her time with her German family, she was an active member of the American expatriate community in Berlin. She went to dances at the American Student Association and was a member of the American Women's Club in Bellevuestrasse, later serving as its chairwoman. The Harnacks were popular at the American Church in Nollendorfplatz where they attended services. In the summer of 1932, Mildred was fired from the University of Berlin. In 1934, the couple moved to the third floor apartment at 16 Schöneberger Woyrschstraße, close to the Tiergarten. The house was destroyed in the war and is now known as 14 Genthiner Straße"[7]
Mildred met her husband while studying at university in Wisconsin. She left for Germany a year after he returned to Germany as his studies were completed in Wisconsin prior to Second World War. Prior to the Second World War she founded a group that secretly published and circulated anti-Nazi papers. This group during the war was an underground group of Germans against the Nazis that saved people and provided intelligence to the Allies. Her husband was also involved in the German underground. This group were known as the Red Orchestra. When they were discovered they were put on trial. He was executed. She was sentenced to six years in jail. Hitler changed the sentence to execution. She was executed by guillotine in 1943. Dr. Hermann Stieve was given many bodies for anatomical research by the Nazis of people who had been executed. This research was of questionable ethicality.
"When the bodies of Harnack and the Schulze-Boysens were in the examining room, one of Libertas' friends, Charlotte Pommer, who had gone into medical studies, recognized them and quit the program on the spot, since she knew that Libertas wanted to be buried somewhere quiet and tranquil. Later Charlotte Pommer became a dissident herself, hiding a family member of one those involved in the 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler and eventually being jailed herself near the end of the war. She is the only one of Stieve's students or assistants known to have left the program for moral reasons. Stieve himself claimed to have refused the bodies of some of the assassination plotters—the only time he allegedly did so—but reportedly had no problem dissecting the body of Walter Arndt, a longtime friend who was executed in 1944."
"Margarete von Zahn (a niece of Arvid Harnack, Mildred’s husband) was a medical student under Dr. Hermann Stieve. One day Stieve called Margarete into the lab and explained he had Mildred’s remains. Margarete carried them home with her that evening in a shopping bag."[8]
As a result, her remains were buried at Zehlendorf Cemetery, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin, Germany.
Mildred is honored annually on the date of her death in her home state of Wisconsin by Wisconsin schoolchildren. A school was named in her honor in Berlin and she is remembered at the memorial in Berlin's former political prison Topographie des Terrors (Topography of Terror).
Her life story is told in the book "All The Frequent Troubles of Our Lives, The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler" by Rebecca Donner. Also available in audio book through Blackstone Audio.
"In Wisconsin, the state legislature has instituted a “Mildred Harnack Observance Day,” a school bears her name, and in 2019 the city of Madison erected a monument to commemorate her as a “WWII Resistance Fighter.” Still, few people know of her, and the smattering of books and articles produced since her execution in 1943 are replete with errors that over time have calcified into fact.[6]
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Mildred is 28 degrees from Herbert Adair, 24 degrees from Richard Adams, 22 degrees from Mel Blanc, 27 degrees from Dick Bruna, 22 degrees from Bunny DeBarge, 32 degrees from Peter Dinklage, 19 degrees from Sam Edwards, 20 degrees from Ginnifer Goodwin, 24 degrees from Marty Krofft, 19 degrees from Junius Matthews, 17 degrees from Rachel Mellon and 22 degrees from Harold Warstler on our single family tree. Login to find your connection.
F > Fish | H > Harnack > Mildred Elizabeth (Fish) Harnack
Categories: Plötzensee Prison Victims (Nazi Regime) | Milwaukee, Wisconsin | 1920 US Census, Montgomery County, Maryland | Brooklyn (town), Green County, Wisconsin | Jena, Thüringen | Berlin, Deutschland | Notables