Os nazistas foram perfeitos
criminosos, seres indignos da Alemanha, ou simplesmente da "raça"
humana.
Eles o foram por preconceito, aliás
debilóide, estúpido, ignorante no mais alto grau, ao pretenderem dividir a
humanidade em raças, muito embora certa ciência do século 19 também afirmasse a
existência de raças.
Até aí,
seria apenas preconceito. Mas os nazistas foram além: pretenderam escravizar
"raças inferiores" e exterminar uma raça em especial, além de várias
outras categorias de seres humanos que eles julgavam indignos de continuar
vivendo.
Mao Tsé-tung
e Stalin mataram muito mais, infinitamente mais, do que Hitler, inclusive
aliados e supostos inimigos de classe, e por diversas outras motivações, mas
eles o fizeram contra o seu próprio povo, em nome de projetos de engenharia
social e atendendo a uma ideologia violenta, como é o marxismo e sua teoria da
luta de classes.
Mas só
Hitler, como poucos na história da humanidade, pretendeu eliminar radicalmente
todo um povo, ou mesmo mais de um povo, talvez uma civilização inteira, como
eram os judeus europeus. Foi um monstro, sem dúvida.
O fato de
que os nazistas estúpidos tenham sido enganados por um dos representantes de um
povo submetido é altamente irônico, mas demonstra, mais uma vez, como são
falhos os julgamentos humanos baseados nas aparências.
Os
companheiros petistas, e os militantes da causa negra, estão cometendo mais um
crime racial no Brasil, felizmente sem exterminação. Mas eles também dividem a
sociedade em afrodescendentes e todo o resto, o que é um racismo estúpido e
criminoso contra a história do Brasil. Fica sendo uma das heranças malditas dos
companheiros, junto com os racistas da causa afrodescendente, que terá de ser
superada mais adiante.
Por enquanto
fiquem com esta boa história num dos blogs do Washington Post.
Paulo
Roberto de Almeida
The ‘perfect Aryan’ child used in Nazi propaganda was actually
Jewish
Morning
Mix, July 7 at 5:12 AM
The
newlyweds came to Berlin as students, a pair of Latvian Jews who wanted
to make it big in singing. In 1934, just after Adolf Hitler took
control of Germany, the young Jewish woman became pregnant with a
child who would soon become known as the “perfect Aryan.”
The
photo was everywhere. It first adorned a Nazi magazine that held a beauty
contest to find “the perfect Aryan” and then was later splashed across
postcards and storefronts.
Image
excerpted from the video testimony of Hessy Taft. (Courtesy of USC Shoah
Foundation)
Less
well-known, however, was the fact that the “Aryan” girl was actually Jewish.
As
remarkable as that revelation is, more remarkable is the story that
accompanies it. The girl, now 80 and named Hessy Levinsons Taft, recently
presented the magazine cover, emblazoned with her baby photo, to the Yad Vashem
Holocaust Memorial in Israel and offered her tale to the German newspaper Bild. But the
extended version of what happened is found in anoral history she gave to the United
States Holocaust Museum in 1990.
It
begins in 1928 when her parents came to Berlin. Both were singers. The
father, Jacob Levinsons, crooned a chocolate-smooth baritone. His wife,
Pauline Levinsons, had studied at the renowned Riga Conservatory in Latvia.
Jacob
had accepted a position at a local opera house and taken the
stage name of Yasha Lenssen, his daughter recalled in the lengthy interview with the Holocaust
Museum. It was the time of surging anti-Semitism in Berlin, and when “they
found out that his name really was Levinsons,” she said, “they decided to
cancel his contract.”
“Without
any money” and living in a “very, very cramped one-room” apartment, the
young couple gave birth to Hessy Levinsons on May 17, 1934. She was beautiful.
So when she was 6 months old, the parents decided to have her picture taken.
“My mother took me to a photographer,” she told the museum. “One of the best in Berlin!
And he did — he made a very beautiful picture — which my parents thought was
very beautiful.”
They
liked it so much, they framed it and propped it up on the piano her father had
given her mother as a present after Hessy was born. They had thought the picture
was a private family photo. But soon after, a woman who helped clean the
apartment arrived to deliver some surprising news.
“‘You
know,’” the woman said, “‘I saw Hessy on a magazine cover in town.’”
Hessy’s
mother found that impossible to believe. A lot of babies look the same, the
mother explained, and surely the helper was mistaken. But she wasn’t.
“‘No,
no, no, no,’” the helperexplained to Taft’s mother. “It’s
definitely Hessy. It’s this picture. Just give me some money, and I’ll get you
the magazine.”
Money
changed hands, and the helper soon returned with a magazine. A headline
that said “the Sun in the Home” stretched across the top with the same picture
that was there, resting on the piano. “The magazine was published out of
Leipzig [in central Germany] and was very definitely one of the few
magazines allowed to circulate at the time,” Taft said in the oral history,
“because it was a Nazi magazine.” She said the pages brimmed with images of
“men wearing swastikas” and even one of Hitler himself “reviewing the troops.”
The
parents were terrified. Why was their Jewish infant on the cover of a Nazi
magazine lauding Hitler’s exploits?
They contacted
the photographer, according to Hessy’s account. “‘What is this?’” the
daughter says her mother asked. “‘How did this
happen?’”
The
photographer told her to quiet down. “‘I will tell you the following,’” the
story went. “‘I was asked to submit my 10 best pictures for a beauty contest
run by the Nazis. So were 10 other outstanding photographers in Germany. So 10
photographers submitted their 10 best pictures. And I sent in your baby’s
picture.’”
“‘But
you knew that this is a Jewish child,’” the mother exclaimed.
“‘Yes,’”
he said, explaining there had been a competition to find the “‘perfect example
of the Aryan race to further Nazi philosophy…. I wanted to allow myself the
pleasure of this joke. And you see, I was right. Of all the babies, they picked
this baby as the perfect Aryan.’”
Family
stories are always prone to hyperbole, distortion and exaggeration — but this
appears to be true. Taft has reams of photographs that show her
in numerous publications and cards. “I can laugh about it now,” the Telegraph quotes Taft, now a chemistry
professor at St. John’s University in New York, as saying. “But if the Nazis
had known who I really was, I wouldn’t be alive.”
The
parents were equally shocked and “amazed at the irony of it all.” In the weeks
afterward, the picture was everywhere. It was in storefront windows, in
advertisements and on postcards. One time, Taft says her aunt went to the store
to buy a birthday card for her first birthday in May of 1935 only to find a
card with Taft’s baby picture on it. “My aunt didn’t say another word, but she
bought the postcard which my parents brought with them throughout the years.”
Eventually,
the family fled Europe and found refuge in Cuba for years before
immigrating to the United States in the late 1940s and settling in New York
City. Hessy Levinsons got married and became Hessy Taft. But the father stayed
behind in Havana to operate a business, which eventually foundered under the
rise of Fidel Castro. “He always said, ‘I have survived Hitler; I will survive
Castro,’” Taft said. “And he did. He did.”
Terrence
McCoy is a foreign affairs writer at the Washington Post. He
served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Cambodia and studied international politics
at Columbia University. Follow him on Twitter here.
