A Job I Wouldn’t Want (118)

More than just not wanting the job, I would consider having the job the most vile of nightmares.  And that’s exactly what Margot Woelk thought when she was forced to become one of the food tasters for Adolph Hitler in WWII.

After her husband was drafted and left to fight in Hitler’s army, she fled Berlin to be away from the war as much as possible. Unfortunately she fled to Rastenburg where she was drafted into ‘civilian service.’  Recently, after decades of keeping this terrible secret, she decided to unburden herself of the horror she lived through.  Yes, at 95 years old, she finally felt she had to tell her story.

Rastenburg is a town fairly close to the Wolf’s Lair, the hiding place of Hitler during the later part of the war.  He was very much afraid, and for good reason, that his food might be poisoned.  To avert that possibility, he had a group of 15 girls drafted to act as food tasters for him.  Margot said the food was always of the best quality with each meal consisting of vegetables and fruits with either rice or pasta, prepared by the best of chefs. Although the food was delicious, with every bite there was the fear it would be her last.  You may recall, food was very expensive and hard to get during those war years and most civilians as well as most military were in a constant state of being malnourished. The job had it’s plus side in that she wouldn’t starve to death, but the down side was the looming possibility of poisoning.

She worked two and a half years as a food taster and never once saw Hitler. She saw his SS Guards and his favorite dog, but never him. When the war started turning for the worse for Germany, the SS Guards warned Margot to leave, which advice she took, heading back home to Berlin. The other 14 girls were from the Rastenburg area and they returned to their homes. Unfortunately for those girls, the Russians came in to their villages, captured them and shot all 14. Margot made it back to Berlin in time for the bombing and destruction of that city. After it was known that Hitler died, the Russians came in and took many prisoners, including Margot. As their prisoner, she endured 14 consecutive days of being raped and beaten. She did survive and managed to reunite with her husband and live another 75 years without revealing what happened. At first she thought she would be punished for working in Hitler’s household, then, after that worry subsided, she just wanted to put the ordeal behind her.

There are so many stories from that time of people doing what they had to do to survive and in many cases having to chose between living and dying. The world they inherited after the war provided very little to keep life going. And yet, somehow people do survive. There’s a resilience of the human spirit even in the worst of circumstances doing the worst of jobs. I salute that young girl who feared for her life with every lifting of a fork and final broke her silence to remind us of the unseen horrors of war.