HITLER'S IDEAL ARYAN BABY
How terrifying it must have been for Pauline Levinsons to learn that the photograph she and her husband had had taken of their 6 month old baby, Hessy, by photographer Hans Ballin, had been selected from hundreds, maybe thousands, of entries as the perfect Aryan baby as part of Hitler’s propaganda for white supremacy.
How terrifying it must have been for Pauline Levinsons to learn that the photograph she and her husband had had taken of their 6 month old baby, Hessy, by photographer Hans Ballin, had been selected from hundreds, maybe thousands, of entries as the perfect Aryan baby as part of Hitler’s propaganda for white supremacy.
Jacob and Pauline Levinsons, a Jewish couple and both talented singers, came to Berlin in 1928 from Latvia, a few years before Hitler came to power, to pursue careers in classical music. Hessy was born May 17, 1934. Not long after that, Jacob lost his job with an opera company because he was Jewish, and had to earn a living as a door-to-door salesman. If anyone found out who the baby was on the posters and postcards, their lives would have been forfeit immediately.
You can imagine how distraught the Levinsons were to find the photo of their daughter being widely circulated on the front cover of Sonne ins Hause, a major Nazi family magazine and one of the few allowed to be published at the time.
Nearly hysterical, Pauline talked the photographer and demanded how he could do this when he knew they were Jewish? Ballin, no friend of the Nazis, replied “I wanted to allow myself the pleasure of this joke. I wanted to make the Nazis look ridiculous”.
You can imagine how distraught the Levinsons were to find the photo of their daughter being widely circulated on the front cover of Sonne ins Hause, a major Nazi family magazine and one of the few allowed to be published at the time.
Nearly hysterical, Pauline talked the photographer and demanded how he could do this when he knew they were Jewish? Ballin, no friend of the Nazis, replied “I wanted to allow myself the pleasure of this joke. I wanted to make the Nazis look ridiculous”.
Professor Hessy Levinson Taft and copy of Sonne ins Hause
Image Source: businessinsider.com/perfect-aryan-poster-child
Image Source: businessinsider.com/perfect-aryan-poster-child
Ballin went on to explain that apparently prominent photographers in Germany had been contacted by Hitler's propaganda people and been asked to submit their ten best baby photographs for a contest. No names were attached, fortunately.
A LONG TIME TO KEEP A SECRET
Ballin did indeed make the propaganda look foolish when he slipped in Hessy’s picture. The “ideal Aryan” was blond-haired and blue-eyed, and Hessy had brown hair and dark eyes. Yet she was selected as the winner, and it was believed her photo was chosen personally by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels himself. This remained a private joke until 2014, and the truth could have gotten them killed.
Not so funny.
Frightened she would be recognized on the streets and questions asked about her identity, Hessy’s parents keep her at home growing up. Her photograph appeared on widely available Nazi postcards, where she was identified by an aunt in distant Memel, now part of Lithuania. But the Nazis never discovered her true identity.
In 1938, her father was arrested by the Gestapo on a trumped up tax charge, but released when his accountant, a Nazi party member, came to his defense. After that, the family left Germany. They moved first to Latvia, before settling in Paris only for that city to fall to the Nazis. With the help of the French resistance, they escaped again, this time to Cuba, and in 1949 the family moved to the United States.
A LONG TIME TO KEEP A SECRET
Ballin did indeed make the propaganda look foolish when he slipped in Hessy’s picture. The “ideal Aryan” was blond-haired and blue-eyed, and Hessy had brown hair and dark eyes. Yet she was selected as the winner, and it was believed her photo was chosen personally by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels himself. This remained a private joke until 2014, and the truth could have gotten them killed.
Not so funny.
Frightened she would be recognized on the streets and questions asked about her identity, Hessy’s parents keep her at home growing up. Her photograph appeared on widely available Nazi postcards, where she was identified by an aunt in distant Memel, now part of Lithuania. But the Nazis never discovered her true identity.
In 1938, her father was arrested by the Gestapo on a trumped up tax charge, but released when his accountant, a Nazi party member, came to his defense. After that, the family left Germany. They moved first to Latvia, before settling in Paris only for that city to fall to the Nazis. With the help of the French resistance, they escaped again, this time to Cuba, and in 1949 the family moved to the United States.
LIFE GOES ON
Hessy Levinsons went to Julia Richman High School in New York and later majored in chemistry at Barnard College, graduating in 1955. As a graduate student at Columbia University, Hessy met her future husband, mathematics professor Earl Taft. The couple joined the faculty at Rutgers University before she interrupted her career to raise a family.
Image Credit: USC Shoah Foundation
Image Source: huffpost.com/entry/nazi-aryan-baby-jewish_n_5551517
Hessy Levinsons went to Julia Richman High School in New York and later majored in chemistry at Barnard College, graduating in 1955. As a graduate student at Columbia University, Hessy met her future husband, mathematics professor Earl Taft. The couple joined the faculty at Rutgers University before she interrupted her career to raise a family.
Image Credit: USC Shoah Foundation
Image Source: huffpost.com/entry/nazi-aryan-baby-jewish_n_5551517
Professor Hessy Levinson Taft was eighty when she finally revealed publically, in 2014, that she was the Nazi propaganda baby. Prof Taft presented the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel with one of the three copies of the magazine her mother managed to save, and told the story of how she became an unlikely poster child for the Third Reich.
“I can laugh about it now,” the 80-year-old Professor of chemistry told Germany’s Bild newspaper in an interview. “But if the Nazis had known who I really was, I wouldn’t be alive…I feel a little revenge,” she said of presenting her photograph to Yad Vashem. “Something like satisfaction.”
Image Source: todayinhistory.blog/tag/hessy-levinsons-taft/
TAKE AWAY
If you think it’s an exaggeration to say Professor Taft played it close to the vest for eighty years, try to use conventional means on the internet to find about her life. The information is pretty much limited to what is in this blog. Give it a try.
Image Source: todayinhistory.blog/tag/hessy-levinsons-taft/
TAKE AWAY
If you think it’s an exaggeration to say Professor Taft played it close to the vest for eighty years, try to use conventional means on the internet to find about her life. The information is pretty much limited to what is in this blog. Give it a try.
Sources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/nazis-perfect-aryan-poster-child-was-jew-2014-7
https://sahistory.org.za/article/how-did-nazis-construct-aryan-identity
https://www.foxnews.com/world/ideal-aryan-baby-on-cover-of-nazi-magazine-revealed-to-be-jewish
https://todayinhistory.blog/2020/05/17/may-17-1934-a-most-perfect-aryan-baby/
https://www.rallypoint.com/
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2020/02/hessy-levinsons-taft-jewish-woman-who.htmlhttps:/www.amusingplanet.com/2020/02/hessy-levinsons-taft-jewish-woman-who.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nazi-aryan-baby-jewish_n_5551517
https://www.descopera.ro/dnews/12872926-cel-mai-frumos-bebelus-arian-desemnat-de-nazisti-in-anul-1935-era-de-fapt-evreu-povestea-inedita-a-lui-hessy-levinson
https://www.businessinsider.com/nazis-perfect-aryan-poster-child-was-jew-2014-7
https://sahistory.org.za/article/how-did-nazis-construct-aryan-identity
https://www.foxnews.com/world/ideal-aryan-baby-on-cover-of-nazi-magazine-revealed-to-be-jewish
https://todayinhistory.blog/2020/05/17/may-17-1934-a-most-perfect-aryan-baby/
https://www.rallypoint.com/
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2020/02/hessy-levinsons-taft-jewish-woman-who.htmlhttps:/www.amusingplanet.com/2020/02/hessy-levinsons-taft-jewish-woman-who.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nazi-aryan-baby-jewish_n_5551517
https://www.descopera.ro/dnews/12872926-cel-mai-frumos-bebelus-arian-desemnat-de-nazisti-in-anul-1935-era-de-fapt-evreu-povestea-inedita-a-lui-hessy-levinson
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