Hitler's Food Taster

From the April 26, 2013, News, AP.  "Hitler's food taster tells of poisoning fears" by Kirsten Griesahaber.

Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden, even from her husband.  In her mid-20s, she spent two and a half years as one of fifteen women who sampled Hitler's food to make sure he was not poisoned when he was at hisWolf's Lair, in present-day Poland, where he spent most of his time during the first years of the war.

Hitler was a vegetarian and extremely paranoid that the British would find a way to poison him.

Towards the end of the war, most Germans faced severe food shortages and what they could get was very bland.  But that was not the fare for their leader.  Hitler got only the best.  But, still, there was that fear.

Margot Woelk insists, however, that she was never a Nazi Party member.

She fled Berlin to avoid Allied bombing while her husband was in the German Army and moved 435 miles east to Rastenburg, then part of Germany, but now Ketrzyn, Poland.  There, she was drafted into civilian service as a food sampler and kitchen bookkeeper.  She never saw Hitler, only his German shepherd Blondie and the SS Guards.

Hitler's death fears were not unfounded.  On July 21, 1944, a trusted colonel detonated a omb in Hitler's bunker, but did not kill the leader.  In reprisal, some 5,000 were killed, however.

As the Soviet Army approached in the closing days of the war, she fled back to Berlin which was agood thing as all 14 tasters who remained were killed when the headquarters were overrun in 1945.

A Little-Known Story.  --GreGen