Debunking Viral Claim About the Talmud and Minors
8 min read
In the 1930s, the Nazis’ perfect “Aryan” baby was actually a penniless Jewish immigrant.
Hessy Levinsons Taft — the Jewish baby once celebrated by the Nazis as the ideal “Aryan” — died at age 91 on January 1, 2026. Her life stands as a quiet, powerful refutation of Nazi racial mythology and a testament to Jewish survival.
In 1935, the Nazi drive to isolate and demonize Jews was soaring to new heights. Hitler had been elected Chancellor of Germany two years earlier; late in 1935 a series of decrees known as the Nuremberg Laws made brutal distinctions between “Aryans” - ethnic Europeans - and non-Aryans: Jews, Roma, and Black people.
The laws were designed to target Jews. Overnight, German Jews were stripped of their citizenship, forbidden from holding government jobs, and were restricted from public spaces lest they “infect” Aryans.
A key driver of this pseudo-racial propaganda was a magazine called Sonne ins Haus, or “Sunshine in the Home,” which promoted the Nazi myths of Aryan perfection and non-Aryan pollution. In 1935 the magazine ran a contest across Germany to find the perfect “Aryan” baby. Ten famous portrait photographers were asked to each submit ten portraits of beautiful German babies. Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist of the Nazi party, would judge the winner himself.
Goebbels chose an adorable six-month-old girl as the winner: the ideal Aryan child. Her name, unbeknownst to Goebbels, was Hessy Levensons. Her smiling likeness was plastered on the magazine’s cover as proof of Aryan superiority, becoming a popular propaganda picture, imprinted on postcards and greeting cards across Germany for years to come.
There was only one snag: Hessy was, in fact, Jewish. The greatest Nazi example of Aryan perfection was a Jewish baby from a Jewish immigrant family. Her remarkable win put her entire family into grave danger.
Hessy’s parents Jacob and Pauline Levinsons were classically trained opera singers. They moved to Berlin in 1928 when Jacob landed a coveted spot in an opera house. He used the stage name Yasha Lenssen to disguise his Jewish-sounding name. As antisemitism increased across Germany, however, the management found out his real, Jewish-sounding name, and fired him. “Living in Berlin, both my parents were going to be opera singers,” Hetty later described; “However, when they found out that my father was Jewish they canceled his contract.”
Life became increasingly hard for Jacob and Pauline, as for all Jews in Germany. Spurned by musical establishments, neither could find work as singers. Jacob took a travelling salesman job to make ends meet and the couple moved into a tiny studio apartment.
In 1934, Pauline gave birth to Hetty. When Hessy was six months old, Pauline and her sister took her to one of Germany’s famous portrait photographers, Hans Ballin. He snapped a picture of the pudgy Hessy wearing a bonnet, with a few brown curls visible underneath. After Ballin developed Hessy’s portrait, Jacob and Pauline kept it displayed on the piano in their tiny flat.
Unbeknownst to the Levinsons, Hans Ballin was one of the photographers tapped to send in ten photos for the contest. He assembled ten baby portraits - then, on a whim, threw in Hessy’s picture too, and sent it off to the magazine.
A few months later, the Levinsons’ housecleaner was working in their apartment and remarked that she’d seen a magazine with their baby’s photo on the cover. The Levinson’s were horrified. Sonne ins Haus was well-known as a Nazi magazine; it was edited by the dear friend of the senior Nazi leader Herman Goering. They worried what would happen if it came out that the baby gracing the latest cover was discovered to be a Jew.
I wanted to make the Nazis look foolish. I wanted to allow myself the pleasure of this jest. And you see, I was right. Of all the babies, they picked this baby as the perfect Aryan.
Pauline rushed to Ballin’s studio and told him there must have been some mistake; Hessy, the winning baby, was Jewish, she explained. Ballin replied that he knew that and sent in her portrait as an act of defiance. “I wanted to make the Nazis look foolish. I wanted to allow myself the pleasure of this jest. And you see, I was right. Of all the babies, they picked this baby as the perfect Aryan.” Years later, when she was an adult, Hessy was asked what she would say if she could speak to Ballin about his decision to send in her photograph: “I would tell him, good for you for having the courage.”
The Levinsons were aware that Germans would respond furiously if they met the real-life Hessy and her family. An acquaintance told them that she’d been visiting friends who had a picture of Hessy, the perfect “Aryan,” hanging on their wall. The acquaintance mentioned that she knew the family and mentioned their Jewish-sounding surname, and the friend ripped the photo off the wall. (She later put it back, saying, “Oh never mind, she’s too cute.”)
Going out in public risked exposing the real Hessy to the world, so her parents kept her home. “I could no longer play in the park,” she later described, “and I couldn’t go to the zoo, my favorite place.” The Levinsons had a second daughter during this time, rendering their circumscribed lives even more cramped.
After Hessy’s father Jacob was briefly arrested by the SS on fabricated charges of tax evasion in 1938, the family realized it was too dangerous to remain in Germany. They fled first to Latvia then to Paris, bringing Hessy’s baby nurse, a young Jewish woman named Gerta, with them.
When Paris fell to the Nazis in 1940, the Levinsons traveled to southern France, where they desperately tried to get visas to enter another country. The Levinsons were ardent Zionists but in the midst of war it was impossible to enter British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. Instead, in 1942 they traveled to the Cuban consulate in the French town of Nice and obtained Cuban visas. They made their way to Marseille, bought train tickets from there to Lisbon, then purchased passages on a boat sailing from Lisbon to Cuba.
But there was a problem: Gerta, their nurse, was still in Paris, with no visa and no way of leaving Nazi-occupied Europe. While Paula waited with Hessy in Marseille, Jacob took the train back to Nice, a perilous journey for a Jew, to visit Cuba’s consulate once more. Terrified of being asked for his papers by the Nazi guards who frequently boarded trains, Jacob stayed in the dining car, eating and drinking nonstop until he felt sick. His plan worked: guards boarded the train, asking for all travelers’ travel documents, except those in the dining car.
In Nice, Jacob sold his silver cigarette case then entered the Cuban consulate carrying cash. Former Tel Aviv University Professor Robert Rockaway describes what happened next:
(Jacob) went back to the Cuban consul to offer him more money for another visa for Gerta. The consul said, ‘I already gave you four visas and am in enough trouble.’ Hessy’s father told him that he would not leave until he gave him another visa, sat down, and waited. At the end of the day, the consul said, ‘I am going to close. Are you going to leave or should I call the police?’ Hessy’s father responded, ‘I’ll leave as soon as you give me a visa.’ The consul looked at him and said, ‘You know, there is an old law in the books in Cuba that says a man can immigrate with all his possessions, including his slaves. Would you say this woman is your slave?’ Hessy’s father said, ‘Of course. Absolutely. This woman is my slave.’ The consul gave him one more Cuban visa.
The Levinsons moved to New York in 1949. Hessy attended Barnard College, married and became a chemistry professor. In 2014, she and her husband visited Jerusalem and made their way to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum. She carried a copy of the original Sonne ins Haus magazine with her picture on the cover and donated it to the site to educate future visitors.
An adult Hessy Levinsons Taft holding the famous baby photo
Reflecting on her experience as the poster child of Nazi supposed “Aryan” perfection, Hessy noted that nearly all of her relatives in Latvia were murdered in the Holocaust. The fact that her Jewish face was celebrated throughout Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe seemed to be one small way she could retaliate. “I feel a sense of revenge, good revenge.”
Hessy’s greatest triumph, however, was merely being in Yad Vashem, in the free Jewish state of Israel. She told reporters: “My strongest memory from childhood was running away. My father told me once that when there would be a Jewish state there would be no more running away.” There, standing in Jerusalem, donating the Nazi magazine that celebrated a Jewish baby as the ideal child, Hessy was proof that the Jewish people have survived - and thrived - despite all of history’s attempts to wipe us out.
A riveting tale! But one small question arises: Wouldn't the Nazis have preferred a "typically Aryan" blond & blue-eyed baby as their poster child?
When my dad was about five years old, in 1941, in the Netherlands, the Nazis came into his class and took him away. They returned him a few hours later, and a few days later his picture appeared in the papers as being the perfect Aryan. He had blond curly hair and blue eyes. He is still alive B’H’ and his name is Maurice Noach.
A cousin of my wife's father was called to the front of the class by a new Nazi teacher and declared to be a true Aryan, being tall, well built, blond and blue-eyed. The class erupted in laughter as the boys knew that he was Jewish.
What a wonderful story.
wow, very motivating story shows who the real jewish people are
What an amazing story!
incredible story
Fear is one of the worst things that evil people inflict on their victims, though often it seems to be regarded as secondary. The nazis inflicted a world of fear on humankind: curse them. What a wonderful story this one is. Thank you.
I saw that photo years ago in a history book. I always wondered what happened to that sweet baby and her parents. I'm glad to know they were able to get out of Europe and survived to tell their remarkable story.
What irony the perfect "Aryan " turned out to be a Jewish child
Revenge is sweet! Especially when it's humiliating!
Wonderful story and great move of the photographer to stick it to the Nazi idiots.
It is important to remember though there were not a lot of "black" people living in Eastern Europe at the time, the Nazi's hatred of "Black people" was just as bad as their hatred of Jews. It was so bad that when Jesse Owns won many awards at the Berlin Olympics 1936, Hitler was so furious and angry because the US had "cheated". While he acknowledged that Jews were human, he refused to acknowledge that black people of African descent were even "human". Thank God he was defeated in World War II.
Hitler regarded the Jews as the lowest of beings. I purposely wrote "beings," because he did not regard Jews as being fully human. While he had clear disdain for many people, he did not have the same profoundly deep hatred for them as he did for the Jews. This is clear in reading his horrid book, "Mein Kamp".
Hitler allowed Arabs and Blacks to serve in a Nazi brigade in Africa. His ties to Arab Muslims influenced the beginnings of the Arab hatred for Jews that we see today.
While Blacks and Arabs served as Nazis, there is no way that he would have allowed the formation of a Jewish brigade.
Is this your attempt to rewrite history?!
While it's known that Hitler, ym"s, had varying amounts of disdain for non-Aryans and certainly did not think highly of Black people, nothing was as vitriolic as his absolute hatred of Jews (as history has unfortunately shown).
Beautiful story. Thank you for sharing.
Another example in the endless proof of the stupidity of the nazi's, another example of the endless proof of Jewish Victories!
We cannot forget the horror not only of Jews but millions of other peoples who were destroyed by the Third Reich as a result of a second WORLD WAR, that was directly caused by said Reich. Jews are often the canary in the coal mine. It starts with the persecution of Jews and certain other minorities BUT IT DOES NOT END THERE. If the people of the world had acknowledged the persecution of Jews in the Third Reich maybe they would have been more cautious in their dealings with the third Reich (specifically the countries of Russia and Great Britain who both were double crossed by the Reich) and the disaster that unfolded who affected the entire World would have at least been more contained.
Elena Schumann, you are mistaken, Hitler's yimach shemo, only desire was to eliminate the Jewish race. Others were just caught up in his evilness.
Actually, you are both right Hitler's( may his name be erased) targeted Jews for a reason Jews gave the world a conscience, but if you go to Yad Vashem you will see a list of different minorities, disabled, etc. My mother( obm) who was in Auschwitz-Birneau said there were Romas( Gypsies) there and my mom( obm) wanted to be with Jews, sometimes even Germans were in concentration camps for some reason or another, so in my view both views are right, the list included what the so called " Aryans" thought were subhuman or worst, these are the facts you will see in Yad Vashem and maybe other places that have to do with the Holocaust
Many many Roma were killed in concentration camps. Not just a few....Also the Nazi intent was that all mentally and physically disabled individuals were to be killed so that they would never have children. Very few were able to avoid this death sentence.
These days the enemies start up with Jews and Israel first, in the end the whole world is in danger too, like before in WW2 during the Holocaust