Margot Woelk is one of 15 women who tasted Hitler's food before each vegetarian delicacy was served to him. She survived the experience — as well as the nightmare of World War II — to tell the tale, but until recently had kept her role serving the Fuehrer a secret, even from her husband.

Woelk, who recently celebrated her 95th birthday, was in her mid-twenties when she worked in the "Wolf's Lair," located in what is now Poland, where Hitler spent the final years of World War II.

"The food was delicious, only the best vegetables, asparagus, bell peppers, everything you can imagine. And always with a side of rice or pasta," Woelk said. "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."

"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."

The regiment of food testers served a double purpose. Except in the case of slow-acting poisons, the tasters would provide advance warning of any skulduggery by showing symptoms themselves.

Additionally, if Hitler were to decline in health or die as a result of an alleged assassination attempt, the charges could be corroborated by the death or illness of the tasters.

Woelk's association with Hitler began shortly after she fled Berlin to escape allied bombing. In Ketrzyn, now part of Poland, she was drafted into civilian service and received her assignment as food tester and kitchen bookkeeper at the Wolf's Lair.

Woelk never saw Hitler in person, but she did spend time with his German Shepherd, Blondie, and his SS guards.

When for Germany the war took a turn for the worse, one of the SS guards advised Woelk to leave the Wolf's Lair for somewhere safer. She returned to Berlin, where she went into hiding.

Later, she found out that her choice to flee may have saved her life.

"I found out that the Russians shot all of the 14 other girls," she said. Russian troops overtook the compound in 1945.

Though she escaped death at the Wolf's Lair, events in Berlin would haunt her the rest of her life.

"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 countless survivors of World War II on both sides of the conflict, Woelk tried to move on as best she could, striving to leave the most painful memories in the past.

Only now, at the end of her life, has she decided to reveal the secret of working for as a food tester, and her many brushes with death — which occurred at least every time Hitler took his dinner.