Jewish woman whose baby photo was chosen by Goebbels as Aryan exemplar dies at 91

Fearing retaliation, Hessy Levinsons Taft and her family kept truth about the picture a secret until decades after leaving Nazi Germany

By ToI Staff 10 January 2026, 5:14 pm

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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 Levinsons Taft as the ideal German Aryan baby, part of Nazi propaganda of Joseph Goebbels on July 8, 2014 after it was recently donated by her to the museum. (GALI TIBBON / AFP)

Hessy Levinsons Taft, the Jewish woman whose photo as an infant was publicized throughout Nazi Germany for being an exemplar of an Aryan baby, died at her home in San Francisco last week, The New York Times reported. She was 91.

In 1934, when Taft was 6 months old, her parents — Latvian Jewish opera singers living in Berlin — had her portrait taken by photographer Hans Ballin.

Ballin submitted her photo to a Nazi contest seeking the perfect Aryan baby. It was selected by Joseph Goebbels, the notorious Nazi chief of propaganda, and appeared on the cover of Sonne ins Haus, a pro-Nazi publication.

The image would spread widely across Germany in magazines, advertisements, postcards, and homes.

When confronted with the matter by Taft’s parents, Ballin said he knew she was Jewish but submitted her photo anyway as a prank, exposing the absurdity of Nazi theories on race, according to her obituary in The Times.

Taft told Reuters in 2014 that she thanked the photographer for having the courage to challenge his government despite not being Jewish. “It was an irony that needed to be exposed.”

Her parents were horrified by the ordeal, fearing execution if her true identity were discovered. Consequently, they kept her indoors and rarely took her out for walks, determined to keep the truth of the photograph a secret.

Taft revealed the story publicly in 1987 in the book “Muted Voices: Jewish Survivors of Latvia Remember” by Gertrude Schneider. The episode became a source of pride for her, and she described it as a form of “good revenge.”

She told Tablet magazine in 2022: “I can laugh about it now, but if the Nazis had known who I really was, I wouldn’t be alive.”

While the Levinsons did live in Berlin at the time the photograph was taken due to their opera careers, Nazi-era laws targeting German Jews did not affect them on account of their being Latvian.

Nevertheless, the family decided to leave Germany in 1937 as Nazi power intensified. They moved through Latvia, Paris, Nice and Cuba, eventually settling in New York City in 1949.

Taft would go on to pursue a degree in chemistry, receiving degrees from Barnard and Columbia. She then worked for over 30 years at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, overseeing Advanced Placement chemistry exams for high school students.

At age 66, she became an adjunct professor at St. John’s University in Queens, teaching chemistry and researching water sustainability.

In 1959, she married Earl Taft, who died in 2021. She is survived by her sister, Noemi Pollack; two children, Nina and Alex Taft; and four grandchildren.