Hitler’s former food taster reveals the horrors of the Wolf’s Lair

[Judi Lynn]

Hitler’s former food taster reveals the horrors of the Wolf’s Lair



Ready to be poisoned: Seven decades after Margot Wölk was forced into life at Hitler’s bunker,
she has told her full story

Tony Paterson
Berlin
Wednesday 17 September 2014

Every meal could have been her last. And when she had finished eating the bland vegetarian dishes put before her, 25-year-old Margot Wölk and her young female colleagues would burst into tears and “cry like dogs” because they were grateful still to be alive.

Margot Wölk was no Nazi, but she was one of 15 young women who were employed at Adolf Hitler’s heavily guarded Prussian “Wolf’s Lair” headquarters during the Second World War. Her job was to taste the Nazi leader’s food before it reached his lips, to make sure it wasn’t poisoned.

She was the only one to survive. All her colleagues were rounded up and shot by the advancing Red Army in January 1945. Now a frail 96-year-old widow, Margot Wölk has overcome feelings of shame and broken decades of silence about her time as Hitler’s food taster to tell her story to German television.

“The food was always vegetarian,” she told Berlin’s RBB television channel, for a programme about her harrowing and sometimes horrific experiences, which was aired on Tuesday. “There were constant rumours that the British were out to poison Hitler. He never ate meat. We were given rice, noodles, peppers, peas and cauliflower,” she recalled.

More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hitlers-food-taster-reveals-the-horrors-of-the-wolfs-lair-9738880.html

[frazzled]

1. Okay, I just had an inappropriate reaction to this

It's pretty damned hard to make me laugh at a Hitler story; and I'm truly embarrassed about it.

But I couldn't help feeling, from the way this story was written, that this woman's greatest memory of terror was that she had to eat vegetarian food: rice, noodles, peppers, peas, and cauliflower. Never any meat!

It made me laugh a little. But then I sobered up and thought how clueless and really evil this woman is: the millions of people starving to death in concentration camps would have thanked the heavens above for just a bit of rice and cauliflower. How selfish and insensitive, really.

[Live and Learn]

2. Umm, I think they were terrified believing that every meal might be their last.

I don't think she was complaining about the vegetarian diet. Although she probably never wanted to eat vegetables again afterwards.

[frazzled]

3. But they were all fine ...

It was the Russians who got them in the end. And, in the writing of this article (blame poor editors), she was complaining about never having any meat.

I imagine there was some terror about the possibility that food would be poisoned (though the risk must have been incredibly low: it's not as if the food was coming from random sources). But at least she would have died with a full stomach, rather than being gassed to death after months of painful starvation. Forgive me if I don't feel pity at this story.

[radicalliberal]

5. With all due respect, I don't understand why you consider this woman to be evil.

She wasn't a Nazi sympathizer. She wasn't saying she suffered as much as the concentration camp inmates. She did not volunteer to become a food taster. I found the article to be interesting. I don't believe that one deserves less or even no sympathy because she didn't suffer as much as others. When I feel sympathy for this woman, my sympathy for the victims of Naziism is not lessened one bit. She deserves to tell her story.

She was raped for 14 days by Russian soldiers and as a result was injured so she'd never be able to have children of her own. (By the way, Soviet troops systematically raped 2 million German women and girls -- compared to between 11,000 and 12,000 who were raped by U.S. troops. Even today the Russians refuse to come to terms with this war crime, among others.) Because of the trauma both she and her husband had suffered, their marriage fell apart. I can be sympathetic to her as well as anyone else. If she had been a Nazi sympathizer, I might feel differently, of course.

[nirvana555]

6. I totally agree with you, radical liberal. She was in a disgusting situation. I read the article

and OMG, she was in a living Hell.... Being raped to the point of not being able to have children and every time she tested the food having the realization that it could kill her. She was forced to do this. It's interesting how people's perceptions are so different. Im not clear why someone would have no sympathy for her. I felt horrible for her......

[radicalliberal]

7. Thank you for your moral support. :)

I was afraid I'd be lambasted.

Well, I see I'm not the only night owl around here! I really should go to bed now -- which, in fact, I shall do at this very minute!

[DesertDiamond]

8. I agree, calling this poor woman "evil" is an extreme misuse of the word.

[Skittles]

9. you're wrong - she, and her friends who were killed, were Hitler's victims too

[mahina]

4. really?

I thought she was weeping as a resu lt of pitting her life on the line by wating this food, and survivng.

[ReRe]

10. What made you "laugh a little?"

... about the woman's terror of having to be one of Hitler's tasters? I swear, I can not find one thing humorous about this story. Did you read the whole article?

[Helen Borg]

11. I had the same reaction!

I'm vegan, and the way this was written was like it was about the horrors of being forced to eat vegetables.

[mucifer]

12. Wow you read the OP and not the article. That is very clear.

Please read the article and consider deleting your post.

I'm Jewish and of European dissent, BTW. Also I'm vegan.

[elehhhhna]

13. so you're laughing at a hostage?

asshole.

your sig line - might want to re-read that.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

15. I'm seriously displeased at your misinterpretation.

This is a real woman. She was kidnapped, basically, and forced to be a poison-detector.

Can you, for a moment, put yourself in another's shoes, and consider the trauma of fearing for your life every time (you are forced to) eat? What the daily prospect of dying by poison might feel like?

Can you stop and think about how it might feel to be imprisoned among violently insane people, completely under their control?

Can you empathize with the horror of repeated rape so severe that your internal organs are permanently damaged?

And, yes, if there was any tone of complaint about the blandness of the food....that is a very human reaction, to gripe about small irritations when the reality is overwhelming. It's how we are ALL wired to survive the unsurvivable, whether that reality is war, illness, loss,..... grief

[YOHABLO]

14. Putting things into perspective, I would say that these ''tasters'' had nothing to fear.

The very knowledge of having people tasting the food would be a deterrence. Wouldn't you think?

[BlancheSplanchnik]

16. no.

.