Hitler's food taster, 95, tells of poisoning fears and horrors of war
Published April 26, 2013
Associated Press
BERLIN – 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 to The Associated Press 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.
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 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 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.
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.
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."
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/04/26/hitler-food-taster-tells-poisoning-fears-and-horrors-war/?test=latestnews#ixzz2RdngGuuo
27 comments:
I got so engrossed in this story - enjoying the read - that I forgot this site is all about statement analysis. So I read again. I see distancing language where I expect it and pronoun usage. But is the part about being raped for 14 days hinky? It feels hinky, but I'm still a newbie here so I can't pinpoint why. It could be that it sounds so horrible, so I think it can't be true. I'm looking forward to reading what all you SA old-timers come up with.
"We were SITTING on wooden benches when we heard and felt an incredible big bang,"
SITTING=When someone brings body posture into a statement it reveals increased tension in that part of the story.
Here we can see why..
Despicable things, all that Hitler did to his own people, caused and allowed to be done to them; and no, I don't doubt that this woman was continually raped for fourteen days or that she could have died at any time during her food tasting tenure.
As we all know, Hitler was an evil creature despite the fact that he was raised in a 'somewhat' christian upbringing in earlier youth, having been severely beaten and abused by his step-father, and was mentally disturbed. No excuse.
From the beginning, german citizens allowed him to gain control while bowing to his every command and willingly supported persecuting the jews; then many found themselves at his mercy in an evil regime' they helped to create themselves.
Persecution of individual jews by german individuals (and others) is alive and well. Recently, I was privy to an awful scene in a busy restuarant by a german woman against a beautiful jewish woman I was having dinner with, who was doing nothing more than smiling as she walked through a buffet line. Recognition by facial charateristics alone and saying not one word; this woman was despised, swore at and cursed at, being verbally attacked in her face and called a pig by the german woman with the blond hair, blue eyes and pink skin, just because she was obviously jewish. Hatred of jews runs deep in their veins. They don't need a reason.
I'd like to know what the food tasters' views would be now pertaining to the jews but she didn't go into that. I didn't spend a great deal of time reflecting on her word usage from a statement analysis standpoint, taking into consideration her origins and advanced age, however; generally speaking, I believe her story to be true. Anon 1
I think what's interesting about the rape is that she says me and then relates it, the rape, without describing why or how, as having destroyed her chance to have children. She says, 'that is why I never had children' in answer to an unasked question. She says the Russians 'destroyed everything.' That 'everything' would be her uterus and fallopian tubes I would presume. There is as little sensitivity to that aspect of her life as she gives in description of coming back to Berlin and finding everything ground down to rubble, ground down to nothing. Her body was a war zone. Having had her mouth used to detect poison and then her body violated for unknown reasons in a way that destroyed her repriductive faculties, given the reporting style and the lack of self pity, I think it's because it was so long ago, like many people of that age, she is pragmatic about those things being of that time and maybe even feels guilty/as if it was a consequence of her job. She doesn't bring emotion into the rape. 14 'consecutive' days....I believe her, but she doesn't edotorialize or add emotional adjectives to the quality of those days. This is in contrast to the fear of having to eat the food and not being able to enjoy it.
She distances the rape. It was mote horrifying and it did more personal and bodily damage, it destroyed her life. But here her body is a depersonalized war zone she observes at a distance in the same language as the destruction of Berlin (which is appropriate there.) I think that's why it comes off as hinky but I believe her. I hope this makes sense from mind to blog.
"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."
--------
This statement is interesting to me. It is difficult to understand the horror that she and her family lived under Hitler's rule. It is even more difficult to understand the atrocities the Jewish people went through. Yet here she states that the rapes from the Russian troops "destroyed everything".
Was "everything" to her a family? Did she have problems in her marriage because of her inability to have children?
I wish she spoke up earlier.
Also, is it just me or have any of you noticed that the more stark the narration and the less adjectives or (even unconscious) attempts to persuade someone into a feeling when telling of an event ---telling and not describing---the more horrifying the event becomes in some ways? or is it because we fear having to go into the mind of someone? I am thinking of well known examples but don't want to weigh the blog down. Conversly, I think of the signs at the airpory during the Bush era...'Terror Alert' and the level. Terror is not an action, its not a verb. Terrorism Threat would have been more appropriate, but instead there were color coded signs telling me 'this way to [color coded range of prompted emotion from a romp in the meadow to abject horror]. I never felt more scared at the highest 'terror' alert because my feeling of emotional manipulation was always at the highest code, from rhetoric. Anyway, I connect that as to why some unemotional narratives are more horrifying to me because they put me in the place of having to feel it rather than telling me what was felt. I don't question her veracity either and the time elapsed probably has a lot to do with the lack of certain displays of emotion, that and maybe she was so violated she won't give that over too.
One last thing, they took her to a 'doctor's apartment.' for a 14 day rape that kept her from having children. The word doctor adds more horror to everything being ruined. There's more horror here even than an extended gang rape.
From there her husband dies 23 years ago, no inbetween. Life was over for her.
Like posters before me the reference of "a doctor's apartment" as opposed to "an apartment" resonated with me.
What would be in a doctor's apartment that wouldn't be in an apartment.
What was the doctor's participation? Was it rape or experiment?
Why 14 days? As in there was a beginning and then an end.
I don't doubt this woman's interview. There were many gruesome experiments carried out during WWII. Today, much debate surrounds their findings because of the gruesome and inhumane manner in which they were carried out.
What a burdon to have carried all these years.
As per my incomplete thought above - Today, much debate surrounds their findings (and use) because of the gruesome and inhumane manner in which they were carried out.
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."
Why are some people skeptical? Rape against women is a weapon of war; it continues even in current wars around the world.
I believe her, she has not said anything that makes her statement seem non-credible.
They raped her in a doctors apartment for 14 days. I think they did more than "rape" her. The fact that she mentions it was a doctors apartment is significant. They destroyed her female reproductive system; that's what I think she is saying. Once you destroy the reproductive system you are left unable to have children.
She suffered so much. I am glad she has been able to tell her story and I hope she feels no shame. There were multiple victims due to Hitler and his equally sick minded followers.
I am a little skeptical of statement analysis for translations, so I read the German article with this interview too. In the German original it states that she returned to Berlin and managed to hide herself in with a doctor - I think this is the "doctor's apartment" she is referring to. It also says that she tried very hard during her life to try and be happy and be a positive person. I think that is why she "brushed over" the talk of the rape. It also says that she was raped by an SS officer who used a ladder to climb into her room in the house where she was living with her mother-in-law, and that she was sort of surprised to see the next day that the ladder was still there (the opposite of what she would have expected to find). From the German her account sounds very truthful. Although she was married and 24 at the time, the soldiers use the "du" form with her and one of them calls her a "Mädel" (girl) when he tells her to flee before the red army. This would have been an sort of disrespectful way to address a grown, married woman during that time. Her language here (to me) shows she is certainly telling the truth.
I should finally say that the German language tends to be a little more direct that the English language - there is a lot less "hemming and hawing." Also, the German language tends to use the passive voice more often, even in writing. Thus sometimes a translation from the German may seem like "distancing language" when it really is not.
I would love to hear about SA in other languages.
Reading everyone's comments, I think my hinky feeling about the rapes stems from my repulsion more than anything else. Neat analysis about the language, Rose. And hi back John!
Canadian Girl, no one here is skeptical that she was raped. I think we are all on the same page.
Two things stood out to me in addition to the above. "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."
Every day we feared it was going to be our last meal. Why the emphasis on meal? Why not: every day we feared we would be poisoned to death?
Also, is there any connection between 15 girls tasting Hitler's meals (why 15?) and 14 days of rape?
"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 food was delicious, only the best" is follow by "But this constant fear -- we knew of all these poisoning rumors and could never enjoy the food".... The food was delicious but they could never enjoy it? If it was delicious, doesn't that in some way show enjoyment of some type?
"But this constant fear -- we knew"... Pause after fear indicates missing information.
"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. "
Sitting: Position can show stress. How it is worded strikes me as off. They "heard and felt" and then they "fell off the benches." Why wouldn't she say the big bang knocked them off their benches? Were they two separate actions? They "heard and felt" and then "fell" (or ducked for safety)?
She changes from using "we" in the instances above, but it was "I" who heard someone say "Hitler is dead."
I would think that they all heard that being yelled. She seems to personalize it by using the word "I".
Based upon the German interview at least, I got the impression that Mrs. Woelk had worked very hard to move on from the past and try to have a joyful life. In fact, the interviewer was very taken by the fact that she put on make-up and jewelry and wore a nice blouse.
For anyone who knows any history of the Red Army occupation of Berlin, rape was extremely common. Some even say that every woman and girl of a certain age who was in Berlin at the time was raped. East German women called the Soviet "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" the "Tomb of the Unknown Rapist."
I think we should always be careful in our statement analysis and take into consideration WHO the statement came from. A 95 year old German woman who survived WWII is not going to talk about things the same way that a 20 year old would. Think of it this way: no one in Germany or anywhere in the world, once hearing her story would have any sort of animosity towards this woman for being "Hitler's food taster." However, this woman only feels comfortable telling her story now that she is on the eve of her death. She has lots of feelings of guilt and shame.
Anyway, I still caution against using statement analysis for things translated from another language. First of all, translations can be bad. I spent some time in Berlin in a law firm fixing bad translations. It definitely happens. Also, people who never learned another language (beyond intermediate level) do not really appreciate how much even a good translation can change certain nuances to a language.
I will give a good example from German (since that is the one I know): In German a person does not take personal ownership of their body parts. Thus, someone would say "I washed THE hair and then I put nail polish on THE toes." Now a good translator would change this to "my" in the English, but what if it was not changed? Or what if it was and we analysed it as "taking ownership." Ownership of something is a really big deal in statement analysis, yet in German this level of ownership DOES NOT EXIST in normal speech. In fact someone would only use "my" hair for extra clarity.
Was this article originally spoken only in German and never English? There are two voices that I pick up on. The interviewer and the lady. Are you saying that this lady cannot speak English and the quotes are not authentically hers because of loss in translation? Rose, would you be willing to translate her German quotes into English for us to consider? If you are saying that the article is not translated well, maybe your knowledge can help us understand how it should sound to my English ears. People of her age (even younger) have struggled with so much that I have never even thought of... much less experienced. We can learn a lot from them if we listen while they can still share with us.
I am 100% sure this was not done originally in English. The translation seems fine to me (but I did not go in depth at all). My only concern is that we be careful when analyzing a translated text, because a translated text is not really that person's statement: it is that person's statement as interpreted by a translator.
I found an example from the interview to help illustrate an issue with translations. When talking about why she worked as Hitler's food taster she says that later the women DID feel abused about the whole thing, but adds "Wehren konnten wir uns nicht." This sentence could be translated as "We could not defend ourselves" but "We could not fight back" would also be acceptable. However, my guess is that a translator would translate this as "We were defenseless." For statement analysis purposes, this is no good.
Another thing that is interesting is that she puts the verb "to defend"(wehren) first in her statement, BEFORE the subject. This is acceptable in German, but it is more usual to say it the way we would in English. i.e. "Wir konnten uns nicht wehren." Thus, what she really says is, "defend ourselves, we could not."
To me this means that fighting back, standing up for herself (or themselves) is sensitive to the speaker. She has made that concept the "subject" of her sentence, so to speak.
These are things that are simply lost in translation. So we could spend all day analyzing "we were defenseless" when really we should be analyzing "defend ourselves, we could not."
Hope this helped ;)
Then, are you saying that we shouldn't try to analyze a translation unless we are fluent in the other language and understand all the nuances? I understand the need to be extra cautious, but can't we still glean some of what was put forth from a translation? It's not a criminal matter at this point, so is there harm in trying to learn from it or do you recommend that we not try in case we might not be accurate enough? When I first read this touching story, I didn't even think to apply statement analysis to it. I, then, saw it posted here and thought maybe there was more to learn from taking another look from a different vantage point.
I did not see your last comment until after I had posted my last one. No worries, I'm just trying to learn. :)
The main reason I urge caution is because on this website, we tear apart a person's statement and analyze every single word very, very carefully. I hope my example above has shown why we may not get good results doing that via a translation. If people want to do it, then go right ahead. This website is not a court of law or anything. I am merely pointing out that the analyses will likely be incomplete and possibly inaccurate. The most reliable analysis will come when the analysis is done by native speakers on native speakers.
Rose,
I've taken Spanish and French so I totally understand what you mean by being careful with translations, statement analysis and meaning. In learning an additional language you learn very fast that one cannot translate word for word and that words, statements, etc. have different meaning in different cultures.
Thank you for sharing the information with us.
CanadianGirl, Peter has pointed out many times that it would be better to see an entire quote and in context. Good or bad, here on the blog we analyze what is available.
Speaking for myself, I didn't say I doubted her rape. My reference to "debate" was regarding using the findings associated with the experiments carried out by the SS during WWII as a foundation for research being conducted today.
As per this sobering article: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005176
[snip]German physicians and medical researchers used Jewish and Roma (Gypsy) women as subjects for sterilization experiments and other unethical human experimentation. In both camps and ghettos, women were particularly vulnerable to beatings and rape.[end snip]
Nic,
I never thought that you doubted the ladies' rape (and torture) story.
I'm aware of Eugenics, unfortunately that is something that was practiced in the province that I live in BEFORE the Nazis put it into practice. It's an ugly part of our province's history.
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