Hessy Levinsons Taft, a Jewish woman whose infant photograph was held up by Nazi propagandists as the ideal “Aryan baby,” has died at her home in San Francisco. She was 91.

The episode that followed Taft throughout her life began in 1934, when she was six months old. Her parents, Latvian Jewish opera singers living in Berlin, had her portrait taken by photographer Hans Ballin. Unbeknownst to them, Ballin submitted the image to a Nazi-sponsored contest seeking the perfect Aryan child.

The photograph was selected by Joseph Goebbels, head of Nazi propaganda, and featured on the cover of Sonne ins Haus, a pro-Nazi publication. The image spread widely across Germany, appearing in magazines, advertisements, postcards, and private homes as a visual embodiment of Nazi racial ideals.

The irony was profound: the baby being celebrated as a model of Aryan purity was Jewish.

According to Taft’s obituary, Ballin later told her parents that he knew the child was Jewish and submitted the photograph deliberately, as a quiet act of defiance meant to expose the absurdity of Nazi racial theories. The revelation terrified the Levinsons, who feared execution if their daughter’s identity were discovered. They kept her largely indoors and guarded the secret closely.

Taft first made the story public in 1987, in Gertrude Schneider’s book Muted Voices: Jewish Survivors of Latvia Remember. Over time, she came to view the episode with a sense of grim satisfaction. “It was a kind of good revenge,” she later said.

In a 2014 interview with Reuters, Taft said she thanked Ballin for his courage. “It was an irony that needed to be exposed,” she said. Speaking to Tablet in 2022, she added, “I can laugh about it now, but if the Nazis had known who I really was, I wouldn’t be alive.”

Although the family lived in Berlin when the photo was taken, Nazi racial laws initially did not apply to them because they were Latvian citizens. As the regime tightened its grip, however, the Levinsons fled Germany in 1937, moving through Latvia, France, and Cuba before settling in New York City in 1949.

Taft went on to earn degrees in chemistry from Barnard College and Columbia University. She spent more than three decades at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, where she oversaw Advanced Placement (AP) chemistry exams. At age 66, she became an adjunct professor at St. John’s University, teaching chemistry and researching water sustainability.

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

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)