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Jewish Woman Featured on Cover of Pro-Nazi Magazine as a Baby Dies at 91
Hessy Levinsons Taft on the cover of the pro-Nazi magazine family magazine “Sonne ins Haus” printed in 1935. Photo: Screenshot/US Holocaust Memorial Museum
A Jewish woman who was featured on the cover of a pro-Nazi magazine in Germany as a baby and promoted as the ideal German Aryan, despite her Jewish heritage, died at the age of 91.
The family of Hessy Levinsons Taft confirmed that she died on Jan. 1 at her home in San Francisco, The New York Times reported. She was born on May 17, 1934, in Berlin, Germany, to parents originally from Latvia who were opera singers. In 1935, her photo was printed on the cover of the pro-Nazi family magazine “Sonne ins Haus” (“Sunshine in the House”). The picture was then featured in every newsstand in Germany and used in storefront windows, Nazi advertisements for baby clothing, on postcards, and framed on the walls in people’s homes.
“When I was about six months old, my parents decided that I should have a photograph taken of me; and my mother took me to a photographer,” she told the US Holocaust Memorial Museum during an interview in 1990. “He made a beautiful picture — which my parents had framed and put on the piano that my father gave my mother as a present when I was born. One day, the lady who came to help my mother clean the apartment, Frau Klauke, said to my mother, ‘You know, I saw Hessy on a magazine cover in town.’”
The housekeeper showed a copy of the Nazi magazine with the reprinted image of Taft on the cover, and her parents were horrified. Taft’s mother confronted the photographer, Hans Ballin, and he admitted that he was asked to submit 10 pictures for a beauty competition run by the Nazi propaganda department, led by Joseph Goebbels. The contest was to find a baby that best represents the ideal German Aryan race, in an effort to further promote the Nazi ideology. The photographer submitted Taft’s photo, knowing that she was Jewish, but without asking the family’s permission. She recalled the conversation her parents had with the photographer about his selection:
“My parents say he said, in German, ‘I wanted to allow myself the pleasure of this joke.’ And then he told my mother, ‘And you see, I was right. Of all the babies, they picked this baby as the perfect Aryan,’” she remembered. “My parents were both shocked by the possible consequences that this could bring and amazed at the irony of it all. But they felt at this moment that it was best to keep it quiet.”
According to Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust, Taft was once asked what she would tell the photographer who submitted her picture in the beauty contest and she responded, “I would tell him, good for you for having the courage.”
“I feel a sense of revenge, good revenge,” she added, about being a poster child for Nazi propaganda.
Taft and her family fled Germany for Paris in 1938. They then escaped Nazi-occupied France in 1941 and traveled through Spain and Portugal before setting sail to Cuba. In 1949, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in New York. Taft’s immediate family survived the Holocaust but most of her extended family members in Latvia were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators, according to Yad Vashem.
Taft studied chemistry and received degrees from Barnard College and Columbia University. She worked at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, where she oversaw Advanced Placement exams in chemistry, and was an adjunct chemistry professor at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. In 1959, she married Earl Taft, and together they had two children, Nina and Alex. Her husband died in 2021. She is survived by her sister Noemi Pollack, two children, and four grandchildren.
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Tucker’s Ideas About Jews Come from Darkest Corners of the Internet, Says Huckabee After Combative Interview
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – In a combative interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson made a host of contentious and often demonstrably false claims that quickly went viral online. Huckabee, who repeatedly challenged the former Fox News star during the interview, subsequently made a long post on X, identifying a pattern of bad-faith arguments, distortions and conspiracies in Carlson’s rhetorical style.
Huckabee pointed out his words were not accorded by Carlson the same degree of attention and curiosity the anchor evinced toward such unsavory characters as “the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy.”
“What I wasn’t anticipating was a lengthy series of questions where he seemed to be insinuating that the Jews of today aren’t really same people as the Jews of the Bible,” Huckabee wrote, adding that Tucker’s obsession with conspiracies regarding the provenance of Ashkenazi Jews obscured the fact that most Israeli Jews were refugees from the Arab and Muslim world.
The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are an Asiatic tribe who invented a false ancestry “gained traction in the 80’s and 90’s with David Duke and other Klansmen and neo-Nazis,” Huckabee wrote. “It has really caught fire in recent years on the Internet and social media, mostly from some of the most overt antisemites and Jew haters you can find.”
Carlson branded Israel “probably the most violent country on earth” and cited the false claim that Israel President Isaac Herzog had visited the infamous island of the late, disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The current president of Israel, whom I know you know, apparently was at ‘pedo island.’ That’s what it says,” Carlson said, citing a debunked claim made by The Times reporter Gabrielle Weiniger. “Still-living, high-level Israeli officials are directly implicated in Epstein’s life, if not his crimes, so I think you’d be following this.”
Another misleading claim made by Carlson was that there were more Christians in Qatar than in Israel.
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Pezeshkian Says Iran Will Not Bow to Pressure Amid US Nuclear Talks
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that his country would not bow its head to pressure from world powers amid nuclear talks with the United States.
“World powers are lining up to force us to bow our heads… but we will not bow our heads despite all the problems that they are creating for us,” Pezeshkian said in a speech carried live by state TV.
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Italy’s RAI Apologizes after Latest Gaffe Targets Israeli Bobsleigh Team
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 4-man Heat 1 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 21, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel, Menachem Chen of Israel, Uri Zisman of Israel, Omer Katz of Israel in action during Heat 1. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Italy’s state broadcaster RAI was forced to apologize to the Jewish community on Saturday after an off‑air remark advising its producers to “avoid” the Israeli crew was broadcast before coverage of the Four-Man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics.
The head of RAI’s sports division had already resigned earlier in the week after his error-ridden commentary at the Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremony two weeks ago triggered a revolt among its journalists.
On Saturday, viewers heard “Let’s avoid crew number 21, which is the Israeli one” and then “no, because …” before the sound was cut off.
RAI CEO Giampaolo Rossi said the incident represented a “serious” breach of the principles of impartiality, respect and inclusion that should guide the public broadcaster.
He added that RAI had opened an internal inquiry to swiftly determine any responsibility and any potential disciplinary procedures.
In a separate statement RAI’s board of directors condemned the remark as “unacceptable.”
The board apologized to the Jewish community, the athletes involved and all viewers who felt offended.
RAI is the country’s largest media organization and operates national television, radio and digital news services.
The union representing RAI journalists, Usigrai, had said Paolo Petrecca’s opening ceremony commentary had dealt “a serious blow” to the company’s credibility.
His missteps included misidentifying venues and public figures, and making comments about national teams that were widely criticized.