Jewish woman once lauded by Nazis as ideal 'Aryan' baby, dies at 91

Hessy Levinsons Taft, the Jewish woman whose baby photo was once celebrated by Nazi Germany as an ideal “Aryan” child, died earlier this month at the age of 91.

Born in Berlin in 1934 to Jewish immigrants from Latvia, Jacob and Polin Levinsons, Taft was photographed at six months old by German photographer Hans Ballin. Without the family’s knowledge, Ballin submitted the photo to a national competition overseen by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Ironically, the Nazis later praised her image as the perfect “Aryan” baby in their antisemitic propaganda.

Taft's picture was later displayed on the cover of the Nazi magazine Sonne ins Haus (Sunshine in the House). The family’s housekeeper eventually identified her on the cover. 

When approached by the Levinsons family, Ballin admitted that he had “deliberately wanted to slip in the little Jewess” as a “joke,” according to The Times. 

“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,” Taft stated to the The New York Times. “I was that baby,” she clarified. 

In 2014, a Yad Vashem official asked Taft what she would tell the photographer Ballin for submitting her baby picture. “I would tell him, good for you for having the courage,” she replied. 

In 1938, the year of Kristallnacht, Taft’s family fled Germany for Paris. After Nazi Germany invaded France, they escaped in 1941 through the neutral countries of Spain and Portugal before finding refuge in Cuba. In 1949, the family moved to the United States, where Taft studied at Barnard College and later earned a master’s degree in biochemistry from Columbia University, and later had a professional career as a chemistry professor at St. John’s University.. She married Earl Taft in 1959 and adopted his family name; the couple had two children and four grandchildren.

In 2014, Taft donated a copy of the Nazi magazine to Yad Vashem. 

“I feel a sense of revenge, good revenge,” she told Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum. 

Like Taft, another remarkable survivor of the Holocaust, Eva Schloss, Anne Frank’s stepsister, also passed away this month at the age of 96. Born in Austria, she and her family fled in 1938 following Nazi Germany’s annexation of the country. Schloss eventually settled in the United Kingdom, where she pursued her studies and later married. After the Second World War, she devoted much of her life to educating young people about the horrors of the Holocaust and the dangers of Nazi ideology.

The family of Mrs. Schloss expressed “great sadness” when confirming her death and praised her as a “remarkable woman: an Auschwitz survivor, a devoted Holocaust educator, tireless in her work for remembrance, understanding and peace.”

In 2022, Mrs. Schloss danced with King Charles III at a special event.

“We are both privileged and proud to have known her and we admired her deeply,” the British royal couple announced after learning that Mrs. Schloss had passed away.