Jewish Woman Once Used in Nazi Propaganda as “Ideal Aryan” Dies at 91

In a stark example of historical irony, Hessy Levinsons Taft, the Jewish baby whose photograph was unwittingly used by Nazi propagandists as the ideal image of the Aryan race, has died at her San Francisco home. She was 91.

Taft passed away on January 1, 2026, according to The New York Times. She leaves behind two children, Nina and Alex Taft, four grandchildren, and her sister Noemi Pollack.

The remarkable story began in 1935 when Taft, then just six months old, was selected by Nazi officials as the face of what they considered the “perfect Aryan” for a prominent pro-Hitler publication. The selection carried profound risk for her family, as the Nazi regime was already implementing severe anti-Jewish policies throughout Germany.

“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. I was that baby,” Taft later wrote in an essay published in “Muted Voices: Jewish Survivors of Latvia Remember.”

Born on May 17, 1934, to Jewish Latvian opera singers living in Berlin, Taft’s face became widespread propaganda after her photographer, Hans Ballin, submitted her photo to a Nazi-sponsored contest without her parents’ knowledge. The family later adopted the name Levinsons, having previously been known as Lewinsohn.

The family first learned of the propaganda use when their housekeeper spotted Taft’s image on the cover of Sonne ins Haus (“Sun in the Home”), a magazine that gained prominence after Adolf Hitler ordered thousands of other publications closed. “On the inside of the magazine were pictures of the army with men wearing swastikas,” Taft later recounted to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “My parents were horrified.”

When Taft’s mother confronted Ballin, he revealed that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had personally selected the photo. “I wanted to make the Nazis look foolish,” Ballin explained, according to The Times. “I wanted to allow myself the pleasure of this joke. You see, I was right. Of all the babies, they picked this baby as the perfect Aryan.”

The image quickly proliferated throughout Nazi Germany, appearing in advertisements for baby products and being displayed in German homes. Fearing discovery of their Jewish identity, Taft’s parents kept her largely confined indoors, rarely even taking her outside.

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

In 1937, as Nazi persecution intensified, the family fled Berlin for Latvia and later settled in Paris. Even there, concerns about Taft’s notoriety followed them. When a physician suggested publishing the story in a Paris newspaper to encourage opposition to the Nazi regime, her father declined out of continued fear.

The family’s journey continued when German forces entered Paris in 1940. The Levinsons escaped to Cuba before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1949, joining thousands of Jewish refugees rebuilding their lives in post-war America.

In her adopted homeland, Taft built an impressive academic career. She earned a chemistry degree from Barnard College in 1955 and a master’s from Columbia University in 1958. For over three decades, she worked with the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, overseeing Advanced Placement chemistry examinations. At 66, she became an adjunct chemistry professor at St. John’s University, where she also conducted research on water sustainability.

Throughout her life, Taft preserved the historical record of her unusual place in Nazi propaganda. The family kept three copies of the magazine featuring her photograph. One was donated to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1990 and another to Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, in 2014. Taft’s children still possess the final copy.

Looking back on her extraordinary story, Taft expressed a sense of vindication at how her Jewish identity had undermined Nazi racial ideology. “I feel a sense of revenge,” she said. “Good revenge.”

Her story stands as a powerful testament to the absurdity of Nazi racial theories and a reminder of how historical ironies can sometimes deliver their own form of justice.