06/03/2026
In 1935, the N**i drive to isolate and demonize Jews was soaring to new heights. Hi**er had been elected Chancellor of Germany two years earlier; late in 1935 a series of decrees known as the Nuremberg Laws made brutal distinctions between “A***ns” - ethnic Europeans - and non-A***ns: Jews, Roma, and Black people.
The laws were designed to target Jews. Overnight, German Jews were stripped of their citizenship, forbidden from holding government jobs, and were restricted from public spaces lest they “infect” A***ns.
A key driver of this pseudo-racial propaganda was a magazine called Sonne ins Haus, or “Sunshine in the Home,” which promoted the N**i myths of A***n perfection and non-A***n pollution. In 1935 the magazine ran a contest across Germany to find the perfect “A***n” baby. Ten famous portrait photographers were asked to each submit ten portraits of beautiful German babies. Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist of the N**i party, would judge the winner himself.
Goebbels chose an adorable six-month-old girl as the winner: the ideal A***n child. Her name, unbeknownst to Goebbels, was Hessy Levensons. Her smiling likeness was plastered on the magazine’s cover as proof of A***n superiority, becoming a popular propaganda picture, imprinted on postcards and greeting cards across Germany for years to come.
There was only one snag: Hessy was, in fact, Jewish. The greatest N**i example of A***n perfection was a Jewish baby from a Jewish immigrant family. Her remarkable win put her entire family into grave danger.
Hessy’s parents Jacob and Pauline Levinsons were classically trained opera singers. They moved to Berlin in 1928 when Jacob landed a coveted spot in an opera house. He used the stage name Yasha Lenssen to disguise his Jewish-sounding name. As antisemitism increased across Germany, however, the management found out his real, Jewish-sounding name, and fired him. “Living in Berlin, both my parents were going to be opera singers,” Hetty later described; “However, when they found out that my father was Jewish they canceled his contract.”
Life became increasingly hard for Jacob and Pauline, as for all Jews in Germany. Spurned by musical establishments, neither could find work as singers. Jacob took a travelling salesman job to make ends meet and the couple moved into a tiny studio apartment.
In 1934, Pauline gave birth to Hetty. When Hessy was six months old, Pauline and her sister took her to one of Germany’s famous portrait photographers, Hans Ballin. He snapped a picture of the pudgy Hessy wearing a bonnet, with a few brown curls visible underneath. After Ballin developed Hessy’s portrait, Jacob and Pauline kept it displayed on the piano in their tiny flat.
Unbeknownst to the Levinsons, Hans Ballin was one of the photographers tapped to send in ten photos for the contest. He assembled ten baby portraits - then, on a whim, threw in Hessy’s picture too, and sent it off to the magazine.
A few months later, the Levinsons’ housecleaner was working in their apartment and remarked that she’d seen a magazine with their baby’s photo on the cover. The Levinson’s were horrified. Sonne ins Haus was well-known as a N**i magazine; it was edited by the dear friend of the senior N**i leader Herman Goering. They worried what would happen if it came out that the baby gracing the latest cover was discovered to be a Jew.
Pauline rushed to Ballin’s studio and told him there must have been some mistake; Hessy, the winning baby, was Jewish, she explained. Ballin replied that he knew that and sent in her portrait as an act of defiance. “I wanted to make the N**is look foolish. I wanted to allow myself the pleasure of this jest. And you see, I was right. Of all the babies, they picked this baby as the perfect A***n.” Years later, when she was an adult, Hessy was asked what she would say if she could speak to Ballin about his decision to send in her photograph: “I would tell him, good for you for having the courage.”
The Levinsons were aware that Germans would respond furiously if they met the real-life Hessy and her family. An acquaintance told them that she’d been visiting friends who had a picture of Hessy, the perfect “A***n,” hanging on their wall. The acquaintance mentioned that she knew the family and mentioned their Jewish-sounding surname, and the friend ripped the photo off the wall. (She later put it back, saying, “Oh never mind, she’s too cute.”)
Read the full article: https://aish.com/nazi-poster-baby-was-jewish/
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