Hessy Taft was a gorgeous baby by any measure in 1935. Her picture was so adorable it was reportedly selected by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as the cover for the Nazi family magazine Sonne ins Hause as the very ideal of an Aryan child. The problem is that Hessy is Jewish, a story that is both hilarious and unnerving. Goebbels’ perfect Gerber baby proved an elegant rebuttal to Nazi fanaticism.
Hessy’s parents, Jacob and Pauline Levinsons, were singers and took her to photographer Hans Ballin to her six-month old photo. They were astonished when their beautiful Jewish baby ended up on the cover of a Nazi magazine. Ballin later explained that he knew that they were Jewish but wanted to make the Nazis look ridiculous. It was a dangerous joke for the family and frankly quite reckless given the growing violence against Jews in Germany.
The family hid their baby to avoid people recognizing her and then uncovering the truth. Her father lost his job at an opera company because he was Jewish. He was later arrested on a trumped up charge and was only saved by when his accountant (who was a Nazi party member) came to his defense at the Gestapo headquarters. The family fled to Latvia and then to Paris. However, the city was then taken over by the Germans so they escaped again with the help of the French resistance. They went to Cuba and finally in 1949 to the United States.
Now 80, Hessy is a chemistry professor at St. John’s University.
It is a story that captures the insanity of the time. For those who wish to forget the struggle of Jews during this period, the innocence of this picture and the evil of the times are powerfully portrayed in Professor Hessy’s story.
Source: Telegraph
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Chosen
Schicklegrueber. Possible real last name of Hitler. Or some such spulling.
Alois Hitler, Adolf’s father, was originally named Schichelgruber, after his mother. He was illegitimate and the name of the father was left blank until he was in his 30s when he took his mother’s husband’s name. There was a claim that possible his father was Jewish but most legitimate scholarship doesn’t buy that.
Fun Trivia is a website. They have the following trivia regarding Jews with German names:
A lot of the surnames that sound Jewish to Americans are simply German names such as Klein, Gross or Grossman, Weiss or Weisman, Rosen, Schwartz or Schwartzman, Segal, Siegal or Sagal, and anything that contains berg, stein, man, thal or bluth. German surnames are very common among American Jews, and many people seem to have inferred the converse: if most Jews have German surnames, then most people with German surnames must be Jews. The reasoning is appealing on a gut-level but logically flawed. Consider this absurd but logically identical argument: most Jews have ten fingers, therefore most people with ten fingers must be Jews.
One reason for the frequency of German names among Jews is related to a misunderstanding of a 1787 Austro-Hungarian law. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, which controlled a substantial part of Europe, was the first country in Europe that required Jews to register a permanent family surname. At the same time, they required Jews to register a German given name. The decree was widely misinterpreted as requiring a German surname, so the overwhelming majority of Jewish surnames created for that registration were German ones. This explains the frequency of German surnames in Western Europe, but it doesn’t explain the frequency of German surnames for Jews in the Russian Empire, where German surnames for Jews are also common. The frequency of German family names among Russia may be due to migration from Western Europe.
Saucy: Of course there are many Germans in Germany and elsewhere with two nn letters like Mann. To be a Mann is to be a Christian man. That is why in America many folks added an n. It is not like the N word. They did not want to be considered to be Jewish.
Here’s a present day photo of Hessy:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2677633/Nazi-poster-girl-declared-ideal-Aryan-baby-propaganda-leaflets-revealed-JEWISH.html
Thank God this story didn’t end “and then this adorable baby was murdered in the gas chamber of Auschwitz.” I was almost afraid to read to the end.
This story reminds me of the heroine Irena Sendler who smuggled Jewish babies away from the Nazis. Even when she was caught and tortured, she refused to betray them. She buried their identifying information. After the war, she dug up the records, and did her best to reunite the children with any surviving family members. Often, the babies are all who survived of their families.
Dangerous times. And yet genocide still happens.
joelbwriter: “The Nazis borrowed extensively from the “best practices” they found for whatever it was they wanted to do.”
From http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/oss-profile-03-02.html
“(25) [Hitler] has the capacity for learning from others even though he may be violently opposed to everything they believe and stand for. The use of terror, for example, he says he learned from the Communists, the use of slogans from the Catholic Church, the use of propaganda from the democracies, etc.
jonathanturley: “For those who wish to forget the struggle of Jews during this period, the innocence of this picture and the evil of the times”
… Look no further than the folks calling for and rationalizing the abandonment of the Iraqi people – who have cute babies, too – to ISIS.
Al Zheimers wrote “If you are of German extraction and have two letter n’s on the last name”
If you are implying that there are no Germans in Germany with “mann” at the end of their name, then you are wrong. Mann is the German word for man and therefore is a common ending, along with “bach” (brook).
Immigration often screwed up people’s names. My grandfather’s name was unceremoniously changed by the idiot immigration officer even though my grandfather had documentation with the correct spelling.
The porn star Marilyn Chambers was the “Ivory Soap Girl” before she started doing hard core porn.
Al – Hitler may have been part Jewish. There was so much misinformation pushed out by the Allies during WWII it is hard to find what is really true anymore.
Hitler was part Jewish. So are many Germans. In America in the 1930s and forties is was fashionable for German origin Americans to change their last name spellings by adding an extra n to the end, so that Hoffman became Hoffmann. Many non denominational or non practicing Jews became Lutheran. Many Germans who came here in the 1848 time zone were progressives who had given up religion. The next generation got roped in. Many second generation Jews were now belonging to some Xian sect, most likely Lutheran and often Unitarian. Episcopalian was another one they opted into. If you are of German extraction and have two letter n’s on the last name then go look at great great grandpa’s Ellis Island records and see how he spelled the name.
The Nazis borrowed extensively from the “best practices” they found for whatever it was they wanted to do. Hitler, the vain little twerp, grew his famous mustache because he was a huge fan of Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin, a Brit and not at all a fan of Germany at the time, was not pleased in the slightest.
This is a great story, Professor. There are hundreds like it, and they are all fascinating, awe-inspiring and gut-wrenching, all at once. This is one I had not seen before. Thank you for posting it!
Justice Holmes
Bernays was beloved by the ASBESTOS and Tobacco industries. He regretted his work for them in later years but he created and established the “sell doubt” strategy that has been used by corporations and deniers of all sorts of facts to this very day.
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Indeed.
It has been said that those who do not know about Bernays simply cannot have a clear picture of American History.
Bernays was named as “one of the one hundred most influential Americans of the twentieth century by Life magazine.”
He was, however, shocked when he heard that Goebbels used his books to plan the extermination of the Jews.
Bernays literally wrote the book “Propaganda” in 1928.
To understand history one must appreciate irony.
Bernays was beloved by the ASBESTOS and Tobacco industries. He regretted his work for them in later years but he created and established the “sell doubt” strategy that has been used by corporations and deniers of all sorts of facts to this very day.
A fascinating act of subversiveness that while funny is also hard to understate the danger to the family and photographer.
“Her picture was so adorable it was reportedly selected by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as the cover for the Nazi family magazine …” – JT
Goebbels considered American Propagandist Edward L. Bernays to be the greatest propagandist of all (Exceptional American Propaganda Inspired NAZI Goebbels).