The dangerous life of Hitler’s taste testers: ‘They could die at every meal’

Noshing on delicious food might sound like a dream job — but not if it could cause you to drop dead at any moment.

That was the dangerous reality for a group of 15 young German women, who were employed for 2½ years in the 1940s by the Nazis as Adolph Hitler’s taste testers. 

A new off-Broadway show called “H*tler’s Tasters,” which runs at Theatre Row through May 21, is inspired by the little-known troop, one of whom finally told her harrowing story in 2013 at age 95. 

“Young women, forced to be in a room together, with nothing else to distract them except for the fact that they could die at every meal,” playwright Michelle Kholos Brooks, told The Post. “If that isn’t a situation ripe for drama, I don’t know what is.”

Added the writer: “Just when you think you’ve heard every frickin’ horrible thing about Hitler.”

Margot Wölk, who died in 2014, was a secretary when she started working against her will as one of the gourmet guinea pigs at 24 years old. 

After her parents’ Berlin apartment was destroyed by Allied bombs, she moved to Gross-Partsch (now Parcz, Poland) to stay with her mother-in-law. Her husband Karl was at war. She had lost contact with him and believed him to be dead.

Her life shattered, Wölk was quickly selected by the town’s mayor to be a food taster for the nearby “Wolf’s Lair” — the Nazis’ headquarters on the Eastern Front. Women were brought on after the Nazis became convinced that the British wished to poison Hitler. In 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg’s Operation Valkyrie — a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler and wrest control of Germany from the Nazis — considered poisoning as a tactic, but scuttled that plan because they knew of the tasters.

Wölk, however, claimed later that she was no Nazi. She had previously avoided joining the League of German Girls and secretly hated Hitler. But, being watched over by the SS, she had little choice but to eat up.

“The food was good — very good,” Wölk told the German newspaper Der Spiegel after six decades of silence. “But we couldn’t enjoy it.”

Wölk and the women tried the scrumptious meals, which were rare for a continent ravaged by war, from 11 a.m. to noon. And, because Hitler was a vegetarian, there was no meat ever. “The best vegetables, asparagus, bell pepper, everything you can imagine and always with a side of rice or pasta,” she said in an AP interview. “It was very tasty, but the fear which came with the food.”

She added: “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.”

None of the 15 ever succumbed to poisoning.

Although they were only required to work while Hitler was in residence, they also never saw the führer themselves — only his Alsatian dog named Blondi.

One day in 1944, as the Soviet Army approached Gross-Partsch, Wölk fled to Berlin via train — a risky move that would ultimately save her life. The other 14 tasters, she later learned, were shot dead by the Soviets. 

Still, her trauma wasn’t over. When she reached the city, she was apprehended by Soviet soldiers and raped for 14 days — so violently that she could no longer bear children.

Wölk’s life improved when she learned that her husband had not died after all, and the couple reunited in 1946. She tried to put the nightmarish experience behind her until a journalist approached her on her 95th birthday, just over a year before she died. 

Speaking about her struggle, the woman said it was her determined, positive attitude that kept her alive.

“I didn’t lose my humor,” she told Der Spiegel. “That was always my trick to survival.”