A Jewish baby became the face of Nazi Aryan propaganda. Her life story outlasted the lie.
“I feel a sense of revenge,” said Hessy Levinsons Taft, who died Jan. 1 at 91
At the archives of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum, the front page of the original issue of the Nazi family magazine ‘Sonnie ins Hous’ (Sunshine in the House) shows baby Hessy Taft as the ideal German Aryan baby. Taft was Jewish. Photo by Gali Tibbon/AFP via Getty Images
(JTA) — Hessy Levinsons Taft, a Jewish woman whose baby photo was selected in a competition to represent the Aryan race in Nazi Germany, died on Jan. 1 at 91.
Born in Berlin in 1934 to Latvian Jewish parents Jacob and Polin Levinson, Taft was photographed when she was 6 months old by a German photographer, Hans Ballin.
Unbeknownst to the family, Ballin later submitted her photo to a national competition overseen by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, to depict the ideal Aryan baby.
After winning the competition, Taft’s image was displayed on the cover of the Nazi magazine Sonne ins Haus, meaning Sunshine in the House, where she was identified by the family’s housekeeper.
After being confronted by Taft’s parents, Ballin told the family that he had “deliberately wanted to slip in the little Jewess” as a joke, according to The Times. Taft’s parents then confined her indoors for fear that she would be recognized, according to Reuters.
Taft first revealed the story behind the photo publicly in 1987 in the book “Muted Voices: Jewish Survivors of Latvia Remember” by Gertrude Schneider.
“It is the story of a Jewish baby selected by loyal Nazis to serve as an archetypal example of the Aryan race, the theory which the Nazis’ leadership seized every opportunity to promote,” Mrs. Taft wrote, according to The New York Times. “I was that baby.”
When asked by Yad Vashem what she would say to Ballin for submitting the image in 2014, she said, “I would tell him, good for you for having the courage.”
In 1938, Taft’s family fled from Germany to Paris, eventually escaping France in 1941 through Spain and Portugal to find safety in Cuba. In 1949, her family immigrated from Cuba to the United States where Taft studied at Barnard College and received a master’s degree in biochemistry at Columbia University.
In 1959, Taft married Earl Taft with whom she had two children and four grandchildren. She taught as a professor of chemistry at St. John’s University.
After donating a copy of Sonne ins Haus to Yad Vashem in 2014, Taft told the Holocaust center, “I feel a sense of revenge, good revenge.”
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