They were feasts of sublime asparagus –
laced with fear. And for more than half a century, Margot Woelk kept her
secret hidden from the world, even from her husband. Then, a few months
after her 95th birthday, she revealed the truth about her wartime role:
Adolf Hitler’s food taster.
Woelk, then in her mid-twenties, spent
two and a half years as one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler’s food
to make sure it wasn’t poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader
in his “Wolf’s Lair,” the heavily guarded command center in what is now
Poland, where he spent much of his time in the final years of World War
II.
“He was a vegetarian. He never ate any
meat during the entire time I was there,” Woelk said of the Nazi leader.
“And Hitler was so paranoid that the British would poison him – that’s
why he had 15 girls taste the food before he ate it himself.”
With many Germans contending with food
shortages and a bland diet as the war dragged on, sampling Hitler’s food
had its advantages.
“The food was delicious, only the best
vegetables, asparagus, bell peppers, everything you can imagine. And
always with a side of rice or pasta,” she recalled. “But this constant
fear – we knew of all those poisoning rumors and could never enjoy the
food. Every day we feared it was going to be our last meal.”
The petite widow’s story is a tale of the horror, pain and dislocation endured by people of all sides who survived World War II.
Only now in the sunset of her life has
she been willing to relate her experiences, which she had buried because
of shame and the fear of prosecution for having worked with the Nazis,
although she insists she was never a party member. She told her story as
she flipped through a photo album with pictures of her as a young
woman, in the same Berlin apartment where she was born in 1917.
One of the
food testers of Adolf Hitler, Margot Woelk poses in her apartment after
an interview with The Associated Press in Berlin, Thursday, April 25,
2013. Margot Woelk was one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler’s food
to make sure it wasn t poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader
in his “Wolf’s Lair,” the heavily guarded command center in what is now
Poland, where he spent much of his time in the final years of World War
II. Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden from the world, even from her
husband then, a few months after her 95th birthday, she revealed the
truth about her wartime role. Credit: AP
Margot
Woelk, one of the food testers of Adolf Hitler, shows an old photo album
and points to a picture taken prior to the WWII and showing the way to
the later built Fuehrer Headquarters “Wolf’s Lair”, during an interview
with The Associated Press in Berlin, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Credit:
AP
Woelk first revealed her secret to a
local Berlin reporter a few months ago. Since then interest in her life
story has been overwhelming. School teachers wrote and asked her for
photos and autographs to bring history alive for their students. Several
researchers from a museum visited to ask for details about her life as
Hitler’s taster.
Woelk says her association with Hitler
began after she fled Berlin to escape Allied air attacks. With her
husband gone and serving in the German army, she moved in with relatives
about 435 miles (700 kilometers) to the east in Rastenburg, then part
of Germany; now it is Ketrzyn, in what became Poland after the war.
There she was drafted into civilian
service and assigned for the next two and a half years as a food taster
and kitchen bookkeeper at the Wolf’s Lair complex, located a few miles
(kilometers) outside the town. Hitler was secretive, even in the
relative safety of his headquarters, that she never saw him in person –
only his German shepherd Blondie and his SS guards, who chatted with the
women.
Hitler’s security fears were not
unfounded. On July 20, 1944, a trusted colonel detonated a bomb in the
Wolf’s Lair in an attempt to kill Hitler. He survived, but nearly 5,000
people were executed following the assassination attempt, including the
bomber.
“We were sitting on wooden benches when
we heard and felt an incredible big bang,” she said of the 1944 bombing.
“We fell off the benches, and I heard someone shouting ‘Hitler is
dead!’ But he wasn’t. ”
Following the blast, tension rose around
the headquarters. Woelk said the Nazis ordered her to leave her
relatives’ home and move into an abandoned school closer to the
compound.
With the Soviet army on the offensive and
the war going badly for Germany, one of her SS friends advised her to
leave the Wolf’s Lair.
She said she returned by train to Berlin and went into hiding.
Woelk said the other women on the food
tasting team decided to remain in Rastenburg since their families were
all there and it was their home.
“Later, I found out that the Russians
shot all of the 14 other girls,” she said. It was after Soviet troops
overran the headquarters in January 1945.
FILE – This undated file picture shows the German Fuehrer Adolf Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun while dining. Credit: AP
When she returned to Berlin, she found a
city facing complete destruction. Round-the-clock bombing by U.S. and
British planes was grinding the city center to rubble.
On April 20, 1945, Soviet artillery began
shelling the outskirts of Berlin and ground forces pushed through
toward the heart of the capital against strong resistance by die-hard SS
and Hitler Youth fighters.
After about two weeks of heavy fighting,
the city surrendered on May 2 – after Hitler, who had abandoned the
Wolf’s Lair about five months before, had committed suicide. His
successor surrendered a week later, ending the war in Europe.
For many Berlin civilians – their homes
destroyed, family members missing or dead and food almost gone – the
horror did not end with capitulation.
“The Russians then came to Berlin and got
me, too,” Woelk said. “They took me to a doctor’s apartment and raped
me for 14 consecutive days. That’s why I could never have children. They
destroyed everything.”
Like millions of Germans and other
Europeans, Woelk began rebuilding her life and trying to forget as best
she could her bitter memories and the shame of her association with a
criminal regime that had destroyed much of Europe.
Margot
Woelk, one of the food testers of Adolf Hitler, shows an old photo album
with a picture of herself taken around 1939 or 1940, during an
interview with The Associated Press in Berlin, Thursday, April 25, 2013.
Credit: AP
She worked in a variety of jobs, mostly
as a secretary or administrative assistant. Her husband returned from
the war but died 23 years ago, she said.
With the frailty of advanced age and the
lack of an elevator in her building, she has not left her apartment for
the past eight years. Nurses visit several times a day, and a niece
stops by frequently, she said.
Now at the end of her life, she feels the need to purge the memories by talking about her story.
“For decades, I tried to shake off those memories,” she said. “But they always came back to haunt me at night.”
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