Hessy Levinsons Taft

Hessy Levinsons Taft (May 17, 1934 - present) was born to Jewish parents in Berlin and is noted for having been featured prominently, as an infant, in Nazi propaganda after her photo was surreptitiously entered in, and then selected as the winner of, a contest to find the most beautiful Aryan baby. Taft's image became one of the most subversive of the twentieth century when it was subsequently distributed widely by the Nazi party in a variety of materials, such as magazines and postcards, to promote Aryanism. Her parents, Jacob and Pauline Levinsons, were unaware of their brazen photographer's subterfuge until learning the photo of their daughter had been selected by none other than Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as the winner of the contest. "I can laugh about it now," the octogenarian Professor Taft told the German language newspaper Bild in July 2014, "but if the Nazis had known who I really was, I wouldn't be alive."