Photo of Mildred Fish courtesy Donner family
Mildred Fish
Many writers tackle a project because they believe it was something they were born to do. That was truly the case for Rebecca Donner.
Donner is the author of All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler (Little Brown). It’s a new book about Mildred Fish-Harnack, Milwaukee born and UW-Madison educated, who was executed in Berlin in 1943 for organizing resistance to Hitler.
Others have written about Fish-Harnack over the years, but Donner has a personal connection to her subject: She is Fish-Harnack’s great-grand-niece.
“When I was a teenager my grandmother said, ‘You have to write about her one day’ and I said I would,” says Donner, who was born in Canada and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her grandmother lived with her Aunt Mildred and her husband, Arvid, in Berlin. “I’ve known about her for most of my life and I’ve been intrigued with the mystery of her.”
Fish-Harnack met her German husband when both were students at UW-Madison. Theirs was a very Wisconsin life; their first date was canoeing on Lake Mendota, they got engaged on Picnic Point, and were married on a dairy farm. In 1929, she joined Arvid in Berlin, where he worked in government and she pursued her doctorate while teaching American literature.
As the Harnacks witnessed the rise of Hitler, they hosted secret meetings to discuss how to oppose him, which moved on to helping Jews escape the country, writing and distributing leaflets, and passing on government information Arvid acquired to the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Donner, who has previously published a novel and a graphic novel, believed there was a story to tell beyond the basics of Mildred’s story (unfamiliar to many, especially outside Wisconsin). Beyond family insights and new documents, Donner says, there were errors and misconceptions that have been perpetuated over the years.
“There are German and French historians from after the war who wrote that (Mildred) was not political, that she was simply following her husband and did what he said,” Donner says. “That’s absolutely false.”
The fact that “the Circle,” as the group of resistors called themselves, also worked with the Soviets tainted their image in the communist-paranoid U.S. after the war. So much so that a declassified document from a U.S. official that Donner unearthed called Mildred’s execution “justified.”
“To see the word ‘justified’ on that memo, speaking about an American citizen who was executed by Nazis was really shocking,” Donner says.
“The Circle” also collaborated with the U.S., and that work makes up the book’s most page-turning passages. Donner built part of the narrative around a boy Mildred tutored — Donald Heath Jr., the 11-year-old son of a U.S. diplomat. She tucked documents into the boy’s knapsack, and he darted home through the streets of Berlin to give them to his father.
“There were times when I felt like I was in a John le Carré novel,” Donner says.
Donner knew of Heath, but thought the opportunity to talk with him had long since passed. But then she found he was still alive, at age 89, and interviewed him in person.
“He told me, ‘You are family to me,’ and he had tears in his eyes,” Donner says. “He called her ‘Aunt Mildred’ until he died.”
Heath died a month after the interview, and his family invited her to go through 12 steamer trunks of documents. It was a gold mine. She found Heath’s mother’s diaries, datebooks that included familiar family names and a two-hour interview with her grandmother.
While Mildred’s life came to a violent end, Donner says she doesn’t believe it was lived in vain.
“None of these groups posed a serious threat to the Nazi regime, but their lives were not wasted,” she says. “They had the courage of their convictions. They did not squander their lives for a hopeless cause.”
