No greater sacrifice

By Herbert Aptheker
BERLIN, GDR

Back in January of this year, shortly before I left totake up a position asa
visiting professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, my dear friend, Sender
Garlin, told me of a Mildred Fish with whom he had studied back in the 1920s
at the University of Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, he told me, she had married a
German visitor named Arvid Harnack.

I asked comrades here in the German Democratic Republic if they had
information about this American comrade who had struggled against Hit-
em with great heroism. Here is a little of what I have been able to find out
so far.

Mildred Fish was born in Milwaukee on September 18, 1902. She went to
West Side High School in that city and from there went to the University of
Wisconsin in Madison. At the age of 22 she was appointed a lecturer in
English and U.S. literature, and while there she met Dr. Arvid Harnack, an
economist-lawyer from Germany who was a research fellow at Madison.
They were married in 1926.

In 1929, the couple went to Germany. She studied at universities in

Jena, Giessen and Berlin — in the latter case at the university now known as
Humboldt. In Berlin she began earning some money by teaching English in
the evenings and by publishing book reviews in such papers as the Berliner
Tageblatt and the monthly magazine, Die Literatur, and other journals. She
also began work as a translator and among others she introduced to Ger-

_ Mnans the work of Leane Zugsmith, Thomas Wolfe and Kay Boyle. Her
translation of Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter Edmonds was a best-
seller. She became a reader of U.S. and English literature for a leading
publishing house — then and now — Rotten & Loening — and also taught
Sergey a4 U.S. literature in what was then still called the University of
Berlin.

With Hitler’s coming to power in 1933, Mildred and Arvid Harnack at
once became members of a Communist led anti-fascist organization — the
Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group — known as the ‘‘Red Orchestra”’ by the
Gestapo. As her cover, Mildred Harnack continued the literary work
sketched above. In 1941 her dissertation on ‘‘The Development of Contem-

porary U.S. Literature’’ was accepted at Giessen University and she under-.

took the translation of much of Goethe in English. At this time she was able
to obtain employment at a foreign office school training Nazi officers and
with this she gained access to important classified information.

' Meanwhile, Mildred Harnack was busily engaged in writing and dis-
tributing anti-Nazi literature such as Die innere Front, assisting those
harassed by the police, operating a wireless station and agitating in all ways
open to her against the fascist monsters. Her husband, Arvid, was similarly
engaged.

In September, 1942, Arvid Harnack and Mildred Harnack-Fish were

arrested by the Gestapo. What they suffered at their hands all know. Later
that year Dr. Arvid Harnack was executed; Mildred Harnack was sen-
tenced by a military tribunal to serve six years at hard labor. This sentence
displeased Hitler; he personally signed an order for her re-trial with the
suggestion that she be executed. A special military tribunal was assembled
— the head of which survived the war, and died about 10 years ago in West
Germany, having served his final'years as a mayor of his town — and to no
one’s surprise changed the verdict of the previous court and ordered death
for Mrs. Harnack. She spent several months in solitary confinement; while
“awaiting death she spent her time translating the poetry of Goethe.
On February 16, 1943, in Berlin, Milwaukee-born Mildred Fish, this
_ Mildred Harnack-Fish of the anti-Nazi resistance movement, was beheaded
by the Hitlerites.

In the New Germany, a pioneer club in Potsdam carries her name.
Now at Humboldt University the highest award in the English and U.S.
literature departments is the Mildred Harnack Prize, given each year to the
students producing the best papers. _

In the new Germany in 1976 a polytechnical school for youngsters from
the first through the tenth grade was re-named in stirring ceremonies the
Mildred Harnack School. It is located on Schulze-Boysen Street in the heart
of Berlin. Her name and that of her husband is engraved on the impressive.
memorial to the 12 faculty members of Humboldt who gave their lives in the
anti-Nazi struggle. This memorial graces a lovely inner court on the main
campus of the university.

The university has an extensive collection, in its archives, of manu-
scripts and journals kept by Mildred Harnack. Using these and other mate-
rials, Dr. Julius Mader has recently completed a biography of her just
published in Berlin. Sasi :

I visited the Mildred Harnack School where 850 youngsters receive an
academic and technical education. One corridor is filled with pictures of
Mildred and her comrades, and all students — from the youngest to the
oldest — are instructed each term — with materials suitable to age-levels —
on the meaning of her martyrdom as part of the seed for the Germany they
now enjoy. This is a Germany cleansed of anti-Semitism and racism, dedi-
cated to peace, and steadily creating a prosperous and fruitful life for its 18
million citizens, living under the socialism projected by the greatest sons
and daughters of Germany — Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, Zetkin and Thael-
mann; and of anti-fascist internationalists like Mildred Harnack.

| $ aaeg de Mons
as

eave ts
4sis Corman
grew (Rell ure

von Se

in San Salvador's Barrios Square ....

The Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the Masses (CRM) headed the march of more t ne |
100,000 people who gathered to pay tribute to slain Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero March

By Cindy Hawes

F ollowing the victorious Sandinista
revolution in Nicaragua, world atten-
tion has now focused on neighboring El
Salvador. This tiny, densely-populated
Central American country of 4.8 million
is in the midst of a bloody war between
the masses of Salvadoran people and
the ruling junta and its allies — the
oligarchy, the. military and U.S. im-
perialism.

But the present struggle did not
erupt overnight. Nor is it the result of
“Cuban penetration’? as some ‘‘ex-
perts’’ would like us to believe. Popular
resistance to nearly 50 years of military
dictatorship, propped up. by the U.S.
government, has deep roots in Salvado-
ran history.

One cannot speak of this popular re-

bellion without recognizing the role of .

the Salvadoran Communist Party
(SCP), which celebrated its 50th an-
niversary on March 28 of this year. For
40 years it was the only Marxist-
Leninist organization in the country,
standing as a solitary fighter for the
cause of the democratic revolution and
socialism.

The SCP was born in clandestineness
at a time of great popular mobilization
in the country. It emerged from an ex-
traordinary movement of city and rural
working people. Its first leaders were
workers and since its founding it has
traditionally had strong ties with the
Salvadoran masses.

- leashed a hloody massacre previous}

‘alongside democratic members of th

_ teachers and other sectors during

Less than two years after its bi
the SCP led an insurrection of agricu
tural workers and poor peasants on
January 22, 1932. The January insurrec
tion was defeated. However, to s
the popular movement and consoli
its power, the military dictatorship, d@
rectly aided by the armed oligarchy, um

unheard of in Latin America. In a ma
ter of weeks, 30,000 workers and peas
ants were killed. q

Reduced to nearly nothing, the SCE
began to rebuild step by step, under
tremely difficult conditions. Althou
unions disappeared and the activity
the SCP was banned, the party
tinued its role in organizing workers ang
peasants during the 13-year dictator
ship of General Maximiliano Hernandeé
Martinez. -

In April 1944, the SCP took pa

|

armed forces and civilians in the @
tempted overthrow of the dictator. AF
though the uprising was defeated, |
general strike that sarhe month suc
cessfully swept away the bloody Gi
tator Martinez. The military, howeveh _
continued to rule in El Salvador.

In the years to follow, the »
worked closely with democratic sect
of the population, workers and pé
ants. Communists participated in ¥
formation of political and:labor org
zations and in the winning of legal
status. Through mass and labor org@!
zations, the party led strikes of worKé

’

wi

seat i . ; : |

Moments later right-wing snipers opened fire on the people in the square, killing at least 40-°-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 6, 1980—Page6