Yad Vashem recently received a most-unusual artifact from the Nazi era – a Nazi family magazine featuring an image of the perfect Aryan baby on its cover, The Telegraph reported Tuesday. 
 
 The twist is that the baby was a Jew, whose picture was knowingly submitted in a contest in order to mock Aryan philosophy and whose true identity was never revealed. 
 
 That baby was Hessy Taft nee Levinsons, whose parents had moved from Latvia to Berli to pursue classical music careers and would later flee to Paris and Cuba, eventually landing in the United States. 
 
 Taft's full story has long been on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and in the "Holocaust Chronicles" book, but the occasion of her donating her yellowing copy of the Sonne ins Haus magazine sparked new interest in this incredible story. 
 
 As Taft, a professor, recalls, her mother took her to a well-known photographer in Berlin in 1935 to have her baby picture taken and was horrified to see Hessy's image on the magazine's cover months later. 
 
 She was afraid the family would be exposed as Jews, but when she told the photographer, Hans Ballin, he told her he "deliberately submitted the photograph to a contest to find the most beautiful Aryan baby," according to The Telegraph. 
 
 "I wanted to make the Nazis ridiculous," the photographer told her. 
 
 Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels allegedly chose the photograph personally. 
 
 Even though relatives in Memel, now in Lithuania, saw the photograph, the Nazis apparently never discovered the true identity of their perfect Aryan baby. 
 
 The Levinsons family fled Germany after the father was temporarily jailed – and released with the help of his Nazi accountant – in 1938, heading for Paris. After the city fell to the Nazis, the French resistance helped the family escape to Cuba. The family moved to the United States after the war. 
 
 “I feel a little revenge,” The Telegraph quoted her as saying on the occasion of presenting her photograph to Yad Vashem. “Something like satisfaction.” ||||| When Hessy Taft was six months old, she was a poster child for the Nazis. Her photograph was chosen as the image of the ideal Aryan baby, and distributed in party propaganda. But what the Nazis didn’t know was that their perfect baby was really Jewish. 
 
 “I can laugh about it now,” the 80-year-old Professor Taft told Germany’s Bild newspaper in an interview. “But if the Nazis had known who I really was, I wouldn’t be alive.” 
 
 Prof Taft recently presented the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel with a Nazi magazine featuring her baby photograph on the front cover, and told the story of how she became an unlikely poster child for the Third Reich. 
 
 Her parents, Jacob and Pauline Levinsons, both talented singers, moved to Berlin from Latvia to pursue careers in classical music in 1928, only to find themselves caught up in the Nazis’ rise to power. 
 
 Her father lost his job at an opera company because he was Jewish, and had to find work as a door-to-door salesman. 
 
 In 1935, with the city rife with anti-semitic attacks, Pauline Levinsons took her six-month-old daughter Hessy to a well-known Berlin photographer to have her baby photograph taken. 
 
 A few months later, she was horrified to find her daughter’s picture on the front cover of Sonne ins Hause, a major Nazi family magazine. 
 
 Terrified the family would be exposed as Jews, she rushed to the photographer, Hans Ballin. He told her he knew the family was Jewish, and had deliberately submitted the photograph to a contest to find the most beautiful Aryan baby. 
 
 Hessy Taft looks through the photographs of her as a child, which were used for Nazi posters (Ohad Zwigenberg, Yedioth Ahoronot) 
 
 “I wanted to make the Nazis ridiculous,” the photographer told her. 
 
 He succeeded: the picture won the contest, and was believed to have been chosen personally by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. 
 
 Frightened she would be recognised on the streets and questions asked about her identity, Prof Taft’s parents kept her at home. 
 
 Her photograph appeared on widely available Nazi postcards, where she was recognised by an aunt in distant Memel, now part of Lithuania. But the Nazis never discovered Prof Taft’s 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 defence. 
 
 After that, the family fled Germany. They moved first to Latvia, before settling in Paris only for the 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. 
 
 Today the Jewish woman who was once a Nazi poster child is a professor of chemistry in New York. 
 
 “I feel a little revenge,” she said of presenting her photograph to Yad Vashem. “Something like satisfaction.” ||||| A birthday card featuring the picture of Hessy Levinsons, winner of the most beautiful Aryan baby contest. 
 
 Hessy Levinsons (now Hessy Levinsons Taft) is the older daughter of Jacob and Pauline (Levine) Levinsons, both talented singers who came from Latvia to Berlin in the 1920s and studied voice at the Hochscule fuer Musik. The two were married in 1928 in Latvia but returned to Berlin to pursue their careers. In 1932, using his legal stage name, Yasha Lenssen, Jacob signed a contract with the Breslau opera to perform as their leading baritone in a series of 19 operas. However, shortly before the season opened, his contract was abruptly cancelled when he was asked to add his original surname to the agreement, a name that immediately identified him as a Jew. After Hitler's rise to power, the Levinsons were increasingly uneasy about their prospects for the future. They turned for advice to the Latvian consul in Berlin, who assured them Hitler would not last long and predicted a flourishing musical career for them after his demise. As foreigners, the Levinsons were somewhat protected from the anti-Jewish economic legislation that was directed against German Jews. Thus Jacob was able to secure a position as the Berlin representative of a Latvian-based firm. 
 
 
 
 Hessy Levinsons was born in 1934. When she was six months old, Hessy was taken to a leading Berlin photographer to have her portrait taken. A few months later this picture appeared on the cover of the Nazi publication, "Sonne ins Haus" [Sun in the House]. Frightened by the possible consequences of their exposure as foreign-born Jews, Hessy's mother rushed to the photographer. He explained that he had known she was a Jewish child and had deliberately submitted her photograph to a contest for the most beautiful Aryan baby in order to ridicule Nazi racial theory, and Hessy was selected as winner of the contest among all the German babies. Several months later an aunt in Memel recognized Hessy's portrait on a picture postcard in a local store and sent it to the Levinsons in Berlin. The card was captioned "Best wishes for the birthday." After the publication of her photograph Hessy was kept largely at home lest she be recognized in the street and her parents questioned about her identity. In 1936 her sister Naomi was born. That same year her father was arrested by the Gestapo on a trumped-up tax charge. He was released only after his accountant, a Nazi party member, came to his defense. Following this incident the Levinsons left for Latvia, where they remained for a year until deciding to move to Paris in 1938. The family had fully reestablished itself when the Germans entered Paris. Jacob applied for American visas but had no way of knowing when they might come through. In 1941, when the round-up of foreign Jews began in Paris, the Levinsons fled to Memac-sur-Mer, a coastal town near Bordeaux. From there they were led by members of the French resistance to Nice. In the meantime Jacob received notice that their American visas had arrived, but that only 45 days remained to get to the U.S. before the visas would expire. Unable to find immediate transport to the United States, Jacob applied for an extension of their U.S. visas. The U.S. Department of Immigration denied these extensions. Jacob then secured Cuban visas for the family and booked passage on the Serpa Pinto, a Portuguese ship that left from Lisbon in early in 1942 for Havana. The family spent the next seven years in the Cuban capital, where Hessy and her sister grew up. In 1948 the Levinsons reapplied for immigration to the U.S. and arrived in New York in 1949. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

– It turns out the Nazis' vision of the ideal Aryan baby—one that was slapped on the cover of a magazine, on postcards, and disseminated in party propaganda—was a Jewish baby. The Telegraph resurfaces the remarkable story of Hessy Taft (born Hessy Levinsons), a now 80-year-old who in 1935, at just six months, was taken by her mother to a Berlin photographer to have her baby photo taken. Months later, Pauline Levinsons spied her daughter's photo on the cover of the Nazi magazine Sonne ins Hause. Worried their Jewish identity would surface as a result, she hurried back to Hans Ballin, who explained to her that he "wanted to make the Nazis ridiculous"—and so the photographer intentionally entered the young Hessy into a contest looking for the most beautiful Aryan baby, one thought to be judged by Joseph Goebbels himself. The truth of the baby's identity never came to light, though Hessy was kept out of public sight by her parents, who feared she'd be recognized. A short time later the family fled Germany for Latvia, then Paris, Cuba, and finally the United States. Haaretz points out that Taft's story isn't an untold one: In fact, it's published on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website. But it's getting a fresh look after Taft recently gave Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial a copy of the magazine cover. "I feel a little revenge," the Telegraph quotes her as saying. "Something like satisfaction." (In other Nazi news: Was Hitler a billionaire tax dodger?)