Nazi's 'Perfect Aryan' Baby, Hessy Taft, Was Actually Jewish, And Now She's All Grown Up

[cali]

In 1935 the German Nazi party held a contest to find the most perfect Aryan baby who would then be featured on the cover of Sonne ins Hause, a Nazi family magazine. They found their ideal baby but never found out that she was in fact Jewish.

Hessy Taft was six months old when her mother brought her to Berlin photographer Hans Ballin to have her picture taken. World War II had yet to begin, but anti-Semitism and the marginalization of Jews was in full swing in Germany. When little Hessy's photo turned up on the cover of a prominent Nazi magazine, her mother feared the family would be exposed as Jewish and targeted.

Taft's mother reportedly went back to the Ballin to ask how the image had ended up in the Nazi contest for "most beautiful Aryan baby," to which he responded, “I wanted to make the Nazis ridiculous."

The Tafts kept their young daughter hidden after the incident as her photograph was by now widely circulated on Nazi postcards, and they feared she would be recognized. The Nazis never learned her true Jewish identity.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/nazi-aryan-baby-jewish_n_5551517.html

[Xipe Totec]

1. Could not happen to a nicer Party

With the possible exception of the GOP.

[Scuba]

2. "... Sonne ins Hause, a Nazi family magazine." Kind of like Family Circle, but with a swastika.

[MisterP]

3. presumably distinction on ancestry was far less important than the act of making that distinction

http://www.amazon.com/Communities-Violence-David-Nirenberg/dp/069105889X/

[Warren DeMontague]

4. And she's still here.

Great story.