DUNWOODY, Ga. — A profile of Hilbert Margol, of Dunwoody, Georgia, one of a dwindling number of veterans took part in the Allies’ European war effort that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany.
PFC HILBERT MARGOL
BORN: Feb. 22, 1924, Jacksonville, Florida.
SERVICE: Army, Battery B, 392nd Field Artillery Battalion, 42nd Infantry Division. Was part of a unit, also including his twin brother, Howard Margol, that liberated the Dachau Concentration Camp on April 29, 1945.
“OUTLIVE THE OFFSPRING OF THE DENIERS”
Victory over Germany was in sight for the Allies on April 29, 1945, as the 42nd Infantry Division stormed toward Munich. Hilbert Margol and his twin brother Howard, now deceased, were part of an artillery convoy heading for the city on a two-lane road through the woods. As Margol remembers it, the convoy was stopped and the Howard brothers were permitted by their sergeant to investigate the source of a stench wafting over the area. After a short walk through the woods they spotted boxcars.
A human leg dangled from one of them.
“So we looked and inside the box car were all deceased bodies, just packed inside the box car,” Margol said.
The 42nd Infantry is among those credited with liberating the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. The Margol brothers were among the first Americans to discover the lingering horrors at the camp, which was established in 1933 and became a symbol of Nazi atrocities. More than 200,000 people from…
