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."
“I can laugh about it now,” Taft said in an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper. “But if the Nazis had known who I really was, I wouldn’t be alive.”
Taft narrowly escaped the Holocaust when the Gestapo arrested her father [ http://dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609580/Dramatic-moment-family-four-ushered-car-burst-flames-driving.html ] on tax charges. Luckily his accountant -- a member of the Nazi party -- came to his defense, and the family was able to flee to Latvia and later to France. When the Nazis captured Paris, the Tafts fled to Cuba with the help of the French resistance and finally settled in the United States in 1949.
On presenting her magazine cover to Yad Vashem these many years later, Taft said, “I feel a little revenge, something like satisfaction.”
Images excerpted from the video [above] of Hessy Taft’s testimony courtesy of USC Shoah Foundation [ http://sfi.usc.edu/ ].
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
