Her husband Karl was at war, though having heard nothing from him in two years, she had long since assumed he was dead. According to Wölk, allied bombs had damaged her Berlin apartment, which stood in knee-deep water. She was married and worked as a secretary during the beginning of the war, but left her parents' bombed-out Berlin apartment in the winter of 1941, to relocate to her mother-in-law's home in the East Prussian village of Gross-Partsch, now Parcz, Poland. As a young woman Wölk said she had refused to join the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel or BDM), the girl's segment of the Hitler Youth, and her father had been condemned for refusing to join the Nazi Party. Wölk was born in Wilmersdorf, the inner city locality of Berlin, in 1917. She was the only one of the 15 to survive World War II, and her background as Hitler's food taster was not revealed until a newspaper interview on her 95th birthday in December 2012. Vividly written and ambitious in scope, The Taster examines the harrowing moral dilemmas of war in an emotional story filled with acts of extraordinary courage.Margot Wölk (sometimes Woelk 27 December 1917 – April 2014) was a German secretary who was among 15 young women who, in 1942, were selected to taste German leader Adolf Hitler's food at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia for two-and-a-half years to confirm that it was safe. But her love for a conspirator within the SS and her growing awareness of the Reich's atrocities draw Magda into a plot that will test her wits and loyalty in a quest for safety, freedom, and, ultimately, vengeance. Though terrified at first, Magda gradually becomes used to her dangerous occupation-though she knows better than to voice her misgivings about the war. Perched high in the Bavarian Alps, the Berghof seems worlds away from the realities of battle. Only after weeks of training does she learn her assignment: she will be one of several young women tasting the Fuhrer's food, offering herself in sacrifice to keep him from being poisoned.

After an interview with the civil service, Magda is assigned to the Berghof, Hitler's mountain retreat. Young German women are expected to do their duty-working for the Reich or marrying to produce strong, healthy children. In early 1943, Magda Ritter's parents send her to relatives in Bavaria, hoping to keep her safe from the Allied bombs strafing Berlin. Amid the turbulence of World War II, a young German woman finds a precarious haven closer to the source of danger than she ever imagined-one that will propel her through the extremes of privilege and terror under Hitler's dictatorship.

The Taster by V.S. Alexander