I Was Hitler’s Food Taster: Woman Reveals How She Was Forced Into Nazi Germany’s Most Dangerous Job

A 93-year-old widow, who is the last surviving member of a group of 15 women employed as Adolf Hitler’s food tester, has revealed she “cried like a dog” after surviving every meal.

As jobs go, being Hitler’s food taster would not have been without its occupational hazards. The fuhrer was not just despised by most of the free thinking world he was also loathed by many Germans and members of the Nazi Party. As such, the poisonous toad was permanently at risk of being poisoned himself. In theory, each mouthful of food his tasters were forced to endure could have been their last. Almost like a culinary version of Russian roulette.

Margo Wolk told Berlin’s RBB television channel that she and the other women would often burst into tears after each meal out of sheer gratitude they were not dead.

The Daily Mail reported that because of constant rumors that Hitler was at risk of being poisoned by the British, the dictator refused to eat meat, and his meals would consist of rice, noodles, peppers, peas and cauliflower.

Ms Wolk was forced to pick up the poisoned chalice and take the deadly job after her husband Karl had been drafted into the army. All these years later, Hitler’s last remaining food taster has nothing but toxic memories of those dark days.

“Some of the girls started to shed tears as they began eating because they were so afraid. We had to eat it all up. Then we had to wait an hour, and every time we were frightened that we were going to be ill. We used to cry like dogs because we were so glad to have survived.”

At the start of each day, Ms Wolk was picked up by a guard and taken to a school building to test Hitler’s food. Although she never once saw the Nazi leader, she was raped by one of his guards.

Ms Wolk was also present during the famous attempt on Hitler’s life on July 20, 1944, when a handful of German officers left a bomb inside Hitler’s lair.

“We were sitting on wooden benches, and suddenly we heard and felt this incredible bang. We fell off the benches and I heard someone shouting, ‘Hitler is dead!’ But of course he wasn’t.”

Aided by an SS officer, Ms Wolk escaped to Berlin in 1944 but when the German capital capitulated to the Russian army in 1945, the horror of war found Ms Wolk.

“We tried to dress up as old woman, but the Russians came for me and the other girls all the same. They cut open our dresses and dragged us into a doctor’s flat. We were held there and raped for 14 days. It was hell on earth. The nightmare never goes away.”

The ordeal left Ms Wolk unable to bear children, something she always regrets.

“I always wanted a daughter. When I reached 50 I thought, if I had a daughter she would be 25 now. But sadly that never happened.”