Beautiful Defiance
Hessy Levinsons Taft, Jewish Infant Chosen as 'Perfect Aryan Baby' in Nazi Propaganda, Dies at 91
She was six months old when Goebbels chose her Jewish face for Nazi propaganda. Hessy Taft spent 91 years savoring the beautiful revenge of that photograph.
Hessy Levinsons Taft, whose photograph as a six-month-old baby was selected by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to represent the ideal Aryan child, despite her being Jewish, passed away on January 1, 2026, at her home in San Francisco. She was 91.
Born in 1934 in Berlin to Latvian Jewish opera singers, Pauline and Jacob Levinsons, Taft's early life unwittingly exposed the flaws in Nazi racial ideology. Her parents commissioned a portrait from renowned photographer Hans Ballin, who, knowing the family's Jewish heritage, submitted the image to a contest seeking the "perfect Aryan baby" as a deliberate prank.
The photo was chosen by Goebbels himself and featured on the cover of the pro-Nazi magazine Sonne ins Haus in 1935. It soon proliferated across Germany, appearing in magazines, advertisements, postcards, and even displayed in homes. Taft's parents were horrified upon discovering this, fearing severe repercussions from the regime.
When confronted by the Levinsons, Ballin explained his intent: to highlight the absurdity of Nazi racial theories. "I wanted to make the Nazis ridiculous," he reportedly said.
The family kept the incident secret for decades, even from Taft herself, due to lingering fears. They fled Germany in 1938, first to France, then Latvia, and eventually Cuba before settling in the United States in 1949. Taft learned the full story only as an adult and later embraced it as a tale of ironic triumph over Nazi pseudoscience.
"I feel a sense of revenge," Taft said in a 1990 interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Good revenge."
In her later years, Taft became a chemistry professor at St. John's University in New York, donated the original magazine to Yad Vashem in Israel, and shared her story through lectures and media appearances. She is survived by her husband, Earl Taft, and their children.