We usually take wars after they are over from the angle of numbers, as if we know how many were killed in them, how many armies participated, how many cities were destroyed, how much reconstruction cost, how surrender treaties were signed, and to how many countries the empire was fragmented.
This is what one finds in history books, related studies, and documentaries.
On the other hand, there are books and films that give us personal and individual details in wars, which are more influential on the reader and viewer, as these small details last and reconsider the person as being from flesh and blood, memories, relationships, hopes and pain, and not just as an unknown number.
The novel "A Taste of Hitler's Food" by Italian writer Rosella Postorino comes within the genre that is based on a specific and new idea to provide small and human details within the incendiary war block, especially if this war was like the Second World War that lasted from September 1, 1939 to the second Since September 1945, and the number of its victims is estimated at 60 million people, a large and terrible number that makes that war the bloodiest military conflict in history.
The Arabized version of this novel was issued by the Arab Cultural Center, translated by Moroccan critic Mohamed Al-Tohamy Al-Amari.
True story
The young Italian writer (born in 1978) had begun to draw attention to her with the publication of her first novel, "The Upper Room" in 2007, but her fourth novel, "The Tastes," was the most striking when it was published in 2018, as it was well received by critics, and with It has won many awards and has been translated into many international languages, including Arabic.
In 2014, the Italian novelist read an interview with a German woman named Margot Falk, in which she said that she was one of 15 young women who were chosen to be tasters of the food of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his headquarters, "Wolves' Den", from which he conducted the war battles in East Prussia (currently Poland). .
The assignment was in the last months of that leader's life and that war, for fear that he would be poisoned by enemies to force Germany to end the war.
This exciting idea made the novelist Rosella search for Mrs. Falk, especially since she did not mention many details about that stage in which she made a taste for Hitler's food, and perhaps Rosella wanted more information to build a new novel for her, but that lady will leave the world in 2014, however Her departure did not discourage Rosella, so she wrote her latest novel, which won 8 literary prizes.
Italian fantasy
What is interesting is that an Italian writer writes about this issue, and no German writers write about it, although Mrs. Falk continued to live in Berlin until she was 96 years old.
Perhaps Ms. Falk thought that she should keep this secret of her mission even after the end of the World War and the suicide of Hitler, nearly 70 years ago, and we do not know the reason why the German lady spread this secret in the last months of her life, and this idea came to the imagination of the young Italian writer to write a novel.
Despite the departure of that source of information, and the absence of an archive for this mission that was under the gaze of the German military police, the imagination prompted Bruzzella to write a 3-part novel with more than 380 pages.
Rosella uses 10 female characters to play this role, a tasting of Hitler's food in the fall of 1943, when the Nazi leader is isolated in his "Wolves' Den" in East Prussia, with many leaders, followers and close and loyal friends to him, where he faces a failed assassination attempt.
Tasting the food.. hard work
These female connoisseurs are not volunteers to taste the poison instead of the leader, but rather the security has chosen them and allocated a monthly stipend to them.
Security brings them in the morning, and brings them back at night, in military police buses.
"Be like prisoners" doing a hard and lonely job, putting their lives in danger of death instead of a leader who is afraid that someone will put poison in his food.
“We were starving, even though it was not past 11, not because of the countryside, nor because of traveling by bus, the reason for this hole that we feel in our stomach is fear. Years passed and we suffered from hunger and fear, and when the smell of food permeated our nostrils, the blood started to ooze The pulse is in our temples, saliva is in our mouths."
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The narrator is Rosa Sauer, a 26-year-old Berliner who lives in Grossbach after her marriage to Gregor, but in the war she stays with his parents Joseph and Hertha, because her husband Gregor volunteered in the war, and then became missing after his family received a telegram.
Rosa will convey to us that “present” anxiety during gastronomic hours, and several real and imaginary poisonings, introducing us to those different, frightened, hungry, lost husbands and financial women.
At that time of the war, finding milk for children was a big adventure, let alone eating 3 luxurious meals dedicated to the country's leader!
He also ate different sweets every day before serving them to the Führer (leader in German).
During this, the reader learns more about Alfred, Lenny, Pete, Augustine and the rest of the girls, as well as Lieutenant Ziegler, who falls in love with Rosa, although he is married and she is married to a missing soldier.
Rosa relays the details of her life in her in-laws' home, and introduces her to Duchess Maria and her husband, the colonel, who was behind the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in that residence.
authoritarian violence
Rosa introduces us to the sweet "past" while living in Berlin and introduces her to Gregor at work, their marriage, and their move from Berlin to the marital home, which only lasted months before he volunteered in the war.
What this novel presents is the violence that is exercised on the individual for the life of the leader.
What is the fault of those women, including those who have children, that they die with poisoned food?
How was this strange function invented?
And why should the women face this free imprisonment?
The novel also talks about the great destitution of girls during the war, about the loss of a father, brother, husband, and lover, about their only thinking about the end of the war, about the constant fear of the sounds of shelling as it approaches, about life among apartments and on the stairs towards shelters crowded with frightened people who might all die at any time. time.
Although a long time has passed since the end of this war, the novel presents a work that retains its terrifying freshness with a fun and moving narrative between different times and characters, and because of the many dialogues used by the Italian writer, through this we learn about different characters and stories, including the story of Alfred, who is a girl with another name , but she disguised this name so that Hitler's guards would not discover that she was Jewish, but they discovered that and deported her to the extermination camp.
The novel "A Taste of Hitler's Food" is a human novel in every sense of the word, because it exposes the brutality and bloodiness of man when he possesses absolute power, and it is an interesting narration of young women who lost all their dear and places during the war, and here they are being driven to lose their lives as well.