You don’t usually think of Davenport’s Nahant Marsh as a spot to see movies, but the 305-acre nature preserve and education center will be just that on Aug. 17 at 8 p.m.
That’s when Nahant Marsh will host a free outdoor showing (on an inflatable screen) of the documentary “Wisconsin’s Nazi Resistance: The Mildred Fish-Harnack Story” (2011), as one of the first events in the comprehensive “Out of The Darkness: Holocaust Messages for Today” throughout the area this fall.
The one-hour film takes a provocative look at a Milwaukee-born, University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate who became the only American woman ever executed on the direct order of Adolf Hitler for her involvement in the Berlin resistance movement.
Brian Ritter, executive director of Nahant Marsh, said Friday that they have not hosted an outdoor film in recent years, but were asked to be among many Quad Cities organizations that are part of the Holocaust education effort.
“The story of this woman in particular, it struck us with her Midwest roots, it’s just a neat story,” he said. “We thought it would be appropriate to show it here and just thought it would be neat to have it with the marsh as a backdrop.”
The community-wide project “Out of the Darkness” aims to continue the worldwide fight against religious persecution and discrimination, which was faced by Jews and many other groups at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.
The QC area project includes programs for children and adults, “promoting dignity, diversity, equity, democratic values, human rights, and the power of the human spirit that are so badly needed today,” says the effort’s website.
Fish-Harnack topic of 2013 exhibit
In 2013, the German American Heritage Center in Davenport hosted an exhibit on Mildred Fish-Harnack from the Jewish Museum Milwaukee as a part of a series honoring this Midwestern heroine.
Harnack (1902-1943) was a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who joined the resistance against the Nazis with her German husband.
The exhibition at GAHC — 712 W. 2nd St., Davenport — was sponsored by the Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities and the Holocaust Education Committee of the Greater Quad City Area.
Mildred and her husband Arvid helped Jews and dissidents escape from Germany. They worked to counteract Nazi propaganda by creating and distributing pamphlets that attacked the regime and providing transcripts of speeches and radio broadcasts from outside Germany with information about Nazi defeats — information that Germans could not obtain from the state-run media.
This underground intelligence network was code-named the “Red Orchestra,” because the Nazis felt that the radio broadcasts it sent to allied powers were being played out like an orchestra across Europe, according to the museum. The Third Reich prosecutors used the adjective “Red” to portray the diverse group of people they arrested as Communists.
Mildred and Arvid were arrested on Sept. 7, 1942; they were tried separately after being detained and tortured. Arvid was found guilty and sentenced to death; in her first trial, Mildred was sentenced to 6 years in prison.
Hitler heard this result after the German defeat at Stalingrad on Feb. 2, 1943, and he ordered a retrial where Mildred received the death sentence. On Feb. 16, 1943, Mildred was executed in the Berlin-Plotzensee prison.
At Nahant Marsh (4220 Wapello Ave., in southwest Davenport), there will be bench seating for the film Aug. 17, but people are encouraged to bring lawn chairs as well. For more information on the documentary, click HERE.
