A new off-Broadway show, “H*tler’s Tasters,” is inspired by the young German women employed by the Nazis to prevent Hitler from being poisoned.
Noshing on delicious food might sound like a dream job — but not if it could cause you to drop dead at any moment.
“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.”A new play called “H*tler’s Tasters” is inspired by Margot Wölk’s story.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.
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.
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.