Education
The following activities offer 6th-12th grade students and teachers resources to learn more about Mildred Fish-Harnack and Wisconsin's Nazi resistance movement:
1. Historical figures are often remembered by the important events in their lives, but these events don't always tell the full story. After interacting with the Mildred Fish-Harnack timeline (1902 - present), choose five important events that define Mildred's life. For each event chosen, explain your reasoning.
If the five chosen events are all someone knows of Mildred Fish-Harnack's life, what would be missed? Compare the chosen events with another set of five. Does one set of events favor a certain perspective or point of view? How do we define history by selecting, remembering, and celebrating certain events and not others?
2. Choose a historical slideshow and evaluate the images. What can you learn about the subjects, the place, and the political context of the images? Search online for current images of similar places and people today. Compare the images using the questions below:
- What do you notice first?
- What people and objects are shown?
- What's different?
- Who was the audience for the images?
- What can we learn from the differences?
3. After viewing "Arvid's Farewell Letter to Mildred," analyze the content of the letter. What surprises you about the content of the letter? Based on the letter, what was important in Arvid and Mildred's life together? Imagine writing a farewell letter to a loved one. What would it say?
Arvid's Farewell Letter to Mildred
4. Individually or in groups, analyze one primary resource from the resources page. Use the questions below to determine the importance of the primary resource to Mildred's life.
- What do you notice first?
- Where do you think this came from?
- Why do you think this resource is important?
- Who was this resource made for?
- What can you learn from examining this resource?
As a large group, synthesize all examined primary resources to create a portrait or timeline of Mildred's life.
Now watch "In Search of Mildred." Is the group's portrait or timeline accurate? What is missing? What other primary resources would be useful? Discuss how primary sources can be used to examine a life, event, or time period in history.
5. The cultural center of Jewish life in Milwaukee offers an online teacher's guide to compliment its exhibit "Mildred Fish- Harnack: The Story of a Wisconsin Woman's Resistance."
Jewish Museum Milwaukee Teacher's Guide (PDF)
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