August 6, 2025 • 35 mins
Hilbert Margol was the first of twin boys born to his parents in February 1924. He was nearly finished with high school when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Soon, Margol and his brother, Howard, were in the Army, training on 105 mm howitzers with the 42nd Infantry Division. They saw their first combat in southern France in January 1945. After that, they fought into Germany, crossed the Rhine River, and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Margol explains how his Jewish family was very concerned about the advancement of Nazi forces and ideas long before the U.S. was at war with Germany. He shares the concerns his family had for loved ones in Lithuania and how he learned decades later about the horrible fate they suffered.
He also tells us how his mother's letter to President Roosevelt kept him and his brother in the same unit. He also describes his training on the howitzers and what his first combat experience was like.
Finally, Margol goes into great detail about how he and others discovered the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945, what he saw there, his tireless efforts to share the truth about the Holocaust, and how it deeply impacts him 80 years later.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Margol explains how his Jewish family was very concerned about the advancement of Nazi forces and ideas long before the U.S. was at war with Germany. He shares the concerns his family had for loved ones in Lithuania and how he learned decades later about the horrible fate they suffered.
He also tells us how his mother's letter to President Roosevelt kept him and his brother in the same unit. He also describes his training on the howitzers and what his first combat experience was like.
Finally, Margol goes into great detail about how he and others discovered the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945, what he saw there, his tireless efforts to share the truth about the Holocaust, and how it deeply impacts him 80 years later.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is US Army Private first Class Hilbert Margol.
He served on a one hundred five millimeter Howards her
team in B Company, three hundred ninety second Field Artillery
Battalion in the forty second Infantry Division in World War Two.
He was also among the liberators of Dachau concentration Camp
(00:34):
in late April nineteen forty five. Hilbert Margol was born
on February twenty second, nineteen twenty four. He shared his
birthday with his slightly younger twin brother, Howard, and both
of them shared a birthday with our first President. Margol
says the boys were frequently reminded of that for a
very specific reason.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, she always told us every year on our birthday
for many years, since we were born on George Washington's birthday.
We could never tell a lie, and we tried to
honor her statement.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Margol was just a few months shy of his eighteenth
birthday when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December seventh,
nineteen forty one.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Well, we were seniors in high school. That was December seventh,
nineteen forty one. We graduated high school a little over
a month later, January of forty two, And what I
remember about that attack, of course, was the announcement and
(01:35):
then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's statement be a radio to
the entire country what had happened, and the US was
now at war with Japan.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the US into World
War II. A few days later, the country would also
be at war with Italy and Germany. But the Margol family,
which is Jewish, had already been paying close attention to
the worsening situation in Europe out of concern for family
living in Lithuania.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Our father had his youngest sister with her husband and
two or three young children living in Lithuania. He tried
talking her into relocating to the United States. He would
sponsor her and her husband and children, but she felt
(02:30):
at that time Lithuania was safe and they just wanted
to stay there. They used to correspond back and forth
with letters, and finally, when the letters stopped coming from her,
he knew something that was not right, but never really
(02:51):
knew what happened.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Decades later they finally found out what happened. Margle's brother, Howard,
became a professor and took students to Lithuania. On one
of those visits, he found an elderly man who remembered
what happened to Jewish families.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
He told that before the Germans ever arrived in Lithuania,
there was a group called the Lithuanian Bandits. They were
Nazi sympathizers. They rounded up all the Jews in the
town took them out in the woods. First, they took
the young babies by their ankles, swung them around and
(03:31):
hit their heads against trees in the woods while their
parents and other children in the same family had to
stand there and watch. And then they turned around, had
them dig a trench, and they ended up shooting them
all and just burying them in that trench. And that's
(03:52):
when he got the real story and he learned, and
we know all those years, even today, the Lithuanian government
has never wanted the world to know that some of
their own citizens killed a lot of Jewish families before
the German army ever even came into Lithuania, and to
(04:16):
a certain extent, a lot of something similar to that
happened in Poland. The government just more or less suppressed
the information.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
After graduating high school in January nineteen forty two, Margol
and his brother joined the Army. They entered the ROTC
program and began training on one hundred five millimeter howitzers
while stationed in Florida. However, they agreed to switch to
the Army reserves when told it might allow them to
go to college before heading to war, and they did
(04:46):
go to multiple schools before the Army decided they needed
to send a lot more young men to win the war.
Margo eventually returned to working with one hundred five millimeter howitzers,
but he had to fight to get back there after
The Army and n initially had other plans for him.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
And of course when I got to the forty second
Infantry Division, for about the first two maybe three months,
they put me in the infantry until finally they saw
my mo and realized I belonged in the artillery. So
then they after they qualified me on a M one
(05:22):
rifle which was infantry and I got the sharpshoot of
metal and the instructor told me the reason why I
was so good because I never held a gun before
in my life. I didn't have any bad habits he
had to try and break. So it got back to
(05:43):
the artillery.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
The howitzer units were very effective in the war. In fact,
Margol says Germans later told him how surprised they were
by the speed of the US artillery. So what made
American artillery so devastating?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
We had tremendous training. We could do everything in our sleep.
We were so highly trained by the time we shipped
over there was second We could do whatever we had
to do without really thinking a lot. What are the components, Well,
(06:18):
we didn't carry them one rifles. We carried carbine rifles smaller,
same thirty calibers but smaller, lighter, smaller and wouldn't shoot
as far. And UH learned how to be uh uh
handled them one o fives each. We had four one
(06:40):
oh five million horses in our gun battery. Howard was
a gunner on number two. I was a gunner on
number three, and uh we had a sorry. Each gun
had a sergeant, a corporal, and then the gunner was
third in command. And each howard had contained a total
(07:00):
of ten men sergeant, corporal, gunner, truck driver and the
balance for ammunition preparers. And that was a setup, and
we were so highly trained. Once we got the first
fire missions. After a few fire missions, we knew what
(07:21):
the commands were going to follow. So they were preparing
the ammunition even before we got the information because they
knew what was coming next.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
After pulling them out of college, the army had also
split up Margol and his brother Howard into different units
in different parts of the country, and after repeated attempts
to serve together failed, it took some higher authorities to
make it happen.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Three times, he put in a request for transfer to
my outfit in Oklahoma, get back in the artillery, which
we were highly trained for as gunners. So after the
third time nothing happened, he went to his captain, what's
the status of my transfer requests? The captain told him,
(08:07):
my job is to train you, not transfer you. So
with that information he wrote a letter to our mother
telling her the situation. She wrote a letter to President
Roosevelt saying that she wanted us to serve together, and
we wanted to serve back together. Two weeks later, she
(08:27):
got a letter from the White House signed by the
President's aide some general that as a two star mother,
her request would be granted, didn't say whether I'm going
to him or he's coming to me. Two weeks later
she got another letter from the War Department basically saying
the same thing. We still didn't know. Fortunately, she got
(08:51):
the third letter from the one hundred and fourth Division
headquarters saying Howard was going to be transferred to my
outfit at oklahom Oh. That was time for celebration.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
In late nineteen forty four, the Army quickly prepared the
forty second Infantry Division and two others to get to
Europe to fight in the Battle of the Bulge. Not
all of the division made it over in time, including Margol,
but those that did suffered through intense fighting on the
last couple of days at the Bulge. After a couple
of weeks to regroup, the full forty second Division, including Margol,
(09:25):
saw its first action in January nineteen forty five in
southern France.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Well, we still thought we were in training in the
French countryside north of Marseille. They told us it's close
to midnight one night to dig in our howarzers. So
we dug the howarzers in. They told us who put
our camouflage nets over the guns? We thought well, it's
a sale part of the training until early, very early,
(09:51):
the first light next morning shall start flying over our heads. Said, well,
this must be the real thing, and we realized we
were at the time in a village called Wingans or Motor,
the village of WinGen, France, on the Motor River. We
would dug in on one side of the river. The Germans.
(10:14):
On the other side of the river was what the
locals called a mountain. We called it a very high hill.
The Germans were dug in on the other side of
that very high hill. Took us about three days to learn,
due to the difference in the sound, which shells flying
over our heads were from the Germans going towards targets
(10:37):
behind us, and which shells from the one fifty five
milimeter howartzes and the two hundred and forty milimeter howartzes
behind them were firing towards targets behind the German lines
on the other side of the river. You could tell
by the difference in the sound, you learn which shells
(10:58):
were going coming from where.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
And one of the first things Margol learned in combat
was that he was never very far from the howitzers.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
We had sleeping bags so at nightfall we had to
get in our sleeping bags, and throughout combat we never
were more than a few feet or a few yards
away from the howitzer because we had to get ready
(11:27):
for fire missions morning, noon, night. We could get fire
missions at any time because we were in direct support
of the two twenty second Infantry guys right in front
of us. We never put our howartzers inside any city,
town or village. We were always on the outskirts because
(11:48):
the infantry guys were in the city towns or villages
and whatever was holding them up from advancing, that was
the targets that we were firing at.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
That's Hilbert Margol. He's a US Army veteran of World
War Two. In just a moment, the forty second Infantry
Division keeps pushing east and eventually helps to liberate Docou
Concentration Camp. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
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Speaker 1 (13:14):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is Hilbert Margol. He's a US Army veteran
of World War Two, serving as a one hundred and
five millimeter howitzer gunner in the forty second Infantry Division.
After that first combat in southern France, the forty second
Division kept pushing east. Margol tells us what the aftermath
(13:36):
of that fighting looked like. As the division moved along
and eventually moved all the way to the Rhine.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I guess we were in that position for maybe a
couple of weeks, and then we were ordered to pull
out and head north. That's when we went through different towns, villages,
and as each one was captured. Then we would ride
through the village of town city and see various damages
(14:06):
bombed out areas we never knew which rubble was from
our firing or from aerial bombing or tanks, and then
we would move forward. As the infantry moved to the
next village of town, we followed right behind them, but
at some point went to the Hurtkan Forest. I remember
(14:28):
we had a couple of snow days there in the forest,
and then from there we moved forward, crossed over the
Rhine River into Germany, and that would have been late March,
I think late March the twenty fourth, nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Margo also explains how the artillery guys were placed in
one of the safest possible positions during combat, and he
shares some more about where the forty second Infantry division
went as it advanced into Germany.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Well, we were very lucky because I'd say we were
always on the outskirts behind the infantry, so we never
saw any German tanks except those that were knocked out
on the side of the road. We saw a number
of a lot of German soldiers deceased, some Allied soldiers,
(15:24):
also American soldiers deceased, a lot of dead horses because
when the German army ran out a fuel, they grabbed
whatever horses they could find, hooked them up to pull
their vehicles, and they're howarzers, any tank guns, whatever they had,
(15:47):
and we moved on different Wurtzburg Schweinfurt was another experience,
then Nuremberg. After Nuremberg, we actually took over a German
air base in a suburb of Nuremberg called firth if
(16:07):
U r THH and then from there the next military
objective was Munich.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
But it was late April nineteen forty five when Margol
and the rest of the forty second Division made their
way through Germany and were overcome by a powerful and
unusual smell that they then investigated.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And early Sunday morning, April twenty ninth, nineteen forty five.
We were riding on a two lane country road towards Munich,
and I remember seeing road signs. At one point, the
largest sign said dach Haw, meaning the village city of Dachau, Germany.
(16:48):
Below that was smaller arrow signs in both directions, and
one was pointing in the direction of Munich, and it
had Munchren on it, which in Germany Munich number of kilometers.
We converted it to miles and realized we were eight
nine miles north of Munich, Germany. A short time later
(17:13):
we got orders to pull over on the right side
of the road. The smallest cleared area in the wooded
area where our four hours is were the closest together
they had ever been. Everybody smelled a very strong holder,
and we had a number of fire missions towards Munich.
One of our jeep drivers came by and sat on
(17:36):
the woods on the left side of the road. There
must be a chemical factory creating this very strong older.
My brother Howard came over to me. He said, no,
he don't think it's a chemical factory. What it reminds
him of when we were youngsters, our mother would go
to a meat market and buy a freshly killed chicken,
(17:59):
take it home, hold it over the gas flame of
the stove in the kitchen to burn off any remaining
pin feathers from the chicken. He said, in so doing
it would burn some of the skin and the fat
of the chicken. He said, that's what the older reminds
him of. I asked my gum, Sergeant Tom Rogers' permission
(18:22):
for Howard and I if we could go over through
the woods find the source of what causing this very
small odor. He said, okay, go ahead, don't stay long
because we don't know. We just had a lull and
fire missions. We don't know how long we're going to
be there. So Howard and I took off went through
the woods. It took us about ten minutes to get
(18:44):
through the woods. Some people asked, well, how could you
go that quick? And I said, well, the differences between
woods in this country and over there was people that
lived around the woods, probably almost daily would go into
the woods looking for twigs, branches, limbs to take home
(19:04):
to use his firewood. So the floor of the woods
was clear, so you could go pretty quick, different from
this country.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
That's Hilbert Margol, He's a US Army veteran of World
War Two and helped to liberate Docou concentration Camp. Much
more on that straight ahead. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this
is Veterans' Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.
Our guest in this edition is Hilbert Margol. He's a
(19:34):
US Army veteran of World War Two, serving as a
one hundred and five millimeter howitzer gunner in the forty
second Infantry Division. A moment ago, you heard how a
strange and overpowering smell struck the division as it made
its way to Munich. We now pick up that story
as Margol investigates the source of the smell and tells
(19:55):
us what he discovered.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
The first thing we saw was a wide open area
and we saw a lot of railroad box cars. We
crawled over between two box cars in the middle of
the train. First thing box car on our right. About
four or five of the box cars, the sliding doors
were wide open, and the first one on our right
(20:17):
was unique because it was the only one that had
a deceased prisoner's legs hanging out of the box car.
We had a little Brownie box camera. We had liberated
a couple of weeks earlier. The only film we had
was what was inside the camera, so we hadn't taken
any pictures yet. We didn't know how many films we had,
(20:41):
but we took that picture because that was unique, different
from the other box cars. I used that picture and presentations,
which I do quite often. Anyhow, we looked at some
of the other box cars. Every one of them was
just filled jam filled with seized prisoners. We later learned
(21:03):
this train was called the death train. Twenty days earlier,
it left Buchenwald concentration Camp with about twenty five hundred
Jewish prisoners. Took them twenty days to get from there
to where they ended up the day before we arrived,
because sometimes they had to stop to get cold. Sometimes
(21:26):
they had to stop for the trucks to be repaired
so they could move forward. We got there and then
we noticed there was a two story building close by.
We saw some other soldiers go through a gate in
the middle of that building, so we followed them. The
gate had the words on it our bite mach free
(21:49):
in German, which meant work makes you free. So we
just followed the other soldiers through the gate. We looked
around it was a wide open area, which we left
learned was the area that five point thirty every morning,
thirty two thousand prisoners had to fall off a roll
call every early every morning. We didn't see any of
(22:13):
the prisoners because they were told the day before that
the SS general in charge. Because next to the concentration
camp was a much larger German Army SS training camp
that controlled the concentration camp. So we looked around and
in various places we saw stacks of bodies, naked bodies
(22:41):
stacked like cordwood here there. We didn't understand what we
were seeing because we didn't know what happened, Why were
they doing that, what were they It was like a
Hollywood movie set. We later learned after the war that
the Germans had run out of Without cold, they could
(23:02):
not operate the ovens, so that's why these stacks of
bodies were there, because they couldn't cremate them.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Margo also shared plenty of other memories about what he saw, heard, smelled,
and experienced as the nazis unspeakable treatment of their prisoners
became clear.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
No, because they were all in the barracks, we never
saw i am. We learned later that of the thirty
two thousand prisoners, and some of the barracks were strictly
Jewish prisoners, others were Russian prisoners, Russian soldiers that were prisoners,
and people from other parts of Europe, gypsies, whatever they
(23:48):
call them, romas. And I've read all kinds of stories
about what happened before we got there, and the one
book that I two books that I paid attention to
because I know they're factual based on the authors and contents.
(24:10):
And the Germans for each barracks, they appointed a prisoner
in charge of the barracks because they didn't want to
deal with the prisoners on a twenty four hour basis,
so they appoored them. Like prison system in this country
used to have trustees to be in charge of a
(24:30):
certain number of prisoners, the Germans did the same thing.
I'm trying to think of what they called them. I'll
think of it in a minute. They were the ones
in charge of the prisoners, and they were prisoners, and
they were much tougher on the prisoners than the German
soldiers were because they wanted to show the German soldiers
(24:54):
that they were helping them, so they really were tough
on the prisoners. And doing so, they got better treatment,
they got better food, or doing that. I've read stories
that when our units came in to dock How concentration camp,
(25:15):
some of the prisoners came out of the barracks. Of course,
we were there early Sunday morning, April twenty ninth, nineteen
forty five. The official surrender took place at two point
thirty that afternoon. By that time we were on our
way to Munich. These stories claimed that some of the
prisoners took the rifles from the infantry guys to kill
(25:38):
German soldiers. Not true because inside the prisoner camp there
were no German soldiers. There were these trustees. That's who
they killed. They were prisoners, but they didn't like them.
The other prisoners didn't like them at all, and that's
who they killed. When the forty fifth came in, they
(26:01):
came into the German Army camp SS training camp, which
was much larger and next door the trains. The first
three or four cars of that train railroad cars were
open cars filled with dead bodies. And the first forty
(26:22):
fifth Division soldiers that saw all these dead bodies, a
lot of them were wearing these pajama type striped uniforms,
and they rounded up. There was about fifty German young
soldiers Wehrmacht. They rounded them up, and they ran and
(26:43):
set them up like a firing squad, and they fired
and they killed all but three of them. Three survived.
And when General Patton heard about that, he ordered all
pictures to be destroyed, which they were not. We have
pictures of that. I have pictures that that I acquired,
(27:06):
and that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
As we mentioned earlier, Margol is Jewish, and the reality
of the Holocaust has impacted him deeply ever since that
day at Dachau, but he says at the time he
and other troops were mostly unaware of who the concentration
camp prisoners were or why they were there.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
We didn't understand what the camp was all about. We
didn't understand what we were seeing these railroad cars with
all these dead bodies stacked inside. Because we also learned
after the war that the rail cars that left Buchenwald
they packed these prisoners in like sardines wintertime. They put
(27:49):
a porcelain pot in each rail car is the bathroom.
They gave him a loaf of black bread tatus and
that was it. Locked the doors and sent the train
on their way. We learned all this after the war.
We didn't know any of that when we went in
(28:11):
because the concentration camps were not military objectives period.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
But while he says the rank and file troops did
not know anything about the Holocaust until they saw it
with their own eyes, he also says our military and
political leaders were very much aware of it and took
immediate steps to make sure the world would always be
aware of it.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Oh, they knew, sure, Washington knew, political leaders knew, our
command headquarters knew. They knew about it. But there was
not a military objective. As each camp was liberated, I think,
starting with Bougenball, General Eisenhower ordered all commanding officers within
(29:00):
forty miles of fifty miles of each camp was liberated.
He wanted them to spare every soldier they could to
go there and be a witness to what they witnessed,
because even every one of them, and certainly at dark,
howe all the dead bodies. When the first medical units
(29:20):
came in, they totally ignored the dead bodies. It was
too late to save them. They worked on the ones
that were near death. High percentage of those thirty two
thousand prisoners were very ill with Typhus life's born disease.
The Germans had nothing to kill the lice. All they
(29:43):
did each prisoner came in, they shaved all their hair
off one time and that was it.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
After the war, Hilbert Margol and his brother Howard spent
about nine months on occupation duty. Margol describes his first
assignment while awa.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
My brother and I served for nine months after the
war near Salisburg, Austria, and they had different details. We
were both pfc's private first class and it gave us
different details. The first detail we had we stayed in it.
They put us sleeping quarters, living quarters within an whole
(30:21):
monastery and that's where we lived. Near the monastery was
a former Austrian Army stockade. They filled it up with
SS officers. There were prisoners. Early every morning we would
ride in trucks with the prisoners up on the mountain
(30:42):
side to chop down. The prisoners chopped down trees, then
chopped the trees into smaller sized pieces of lumber wood,
filled them into the trucks to take into Salzburg. First
to give to the bakers to use his firewood for
their ovens, to bake bread, and then some for the
(31:05):
army for the stoves and cibilians that lasted.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Some weeks later, Margol and a couple of other soldiers
were sent to Genoa, Italy to meet a US ship
carrying grain. That grain was then poured into railroad cars
normally reserved for carrying liquids. It passed through the Poe
Valley and the Brenner Pass on the way back to Austria.
He also remembers one incident of stopping by a farm
(31:33):
and picking some ripe tomatoes that most certainly added some
flavor to his army rations. In twenty fifteen, seventy years
after the liberation of Dacau, Margol returned for the anniversary events,
and he remembers a brief interaction with then German Chancellor
Angela Merkel.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
So, when I was old, the speakers were coming out
from the front, but it was stopping go because everybody
else was trying to get out. Suddenly I looked to
my right and there was chance for Angela Merkel of
Germany standing right alongside me. I tapped her on her
arm and thanked her for her remarks because she spoke
(32:14):
in English. She saw a cap similar to this one
thanked me for being a liberator.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Now, eighty years after the end of the war, Margol
reflects on what he's most proud of from his service.
He says, it's a great testament that his generation not
only answered the call for military service, but were able
to adapt to whatever the military, the enemy, or anyone
else through at them.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
We just knew it was our time. Ourselves and all
of our fellow soldiers were all raised during the Great Depression.
Most of us all came from poor families. We were
used to hard times, so we were better prepared for
combat than some of the wars that followed this country
(33:01):
after us. We were used to being in tough situations.
We didn't have a lot, so we were able to
acclimate a lot better to combat.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Margo is also eager to tell his story of service
whenever and wherever he can, and of course, a big
reason for that is the profound impact the Holocaust had
on him, the Jewish people, and the world. He says,
there is a very specific reason why he wants as
many people as possible to hear about the Holocaust.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
When I got home, I got married children, never told
my wife or children anything about my military service, and
some years ago before the pandemic, I was interviewed similar
to this for television. They also have a magazine, a
(33:53):
monthly magazine. They asked me some of the same questions
and they asked me for final thought, which they ended
up using to close the program. And the thought that
came to mind that I said at the time that
I hope and pray that the offspring of all the
(34:16):
survivors outlive the offspring of the deniers that the Holocaust,
whether it existed or not. And that's what they used
to close that TV program.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
That's US Army Private first Class Hilbert Margol. He served
on a one hundred and five millimeter howitzer teen in
B Company, three hundred and ninety second Field Artillery Battalion
in the forty second Infantry Division. He was also among
the liberators of Docout concentration Camp in late April nineteen
forty five. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veteran's Chronicles. Hi,
(35:05):
this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow
the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're
at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube
(35:26):
channel for full oral histories and special features, and of
course please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you
get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join
us next time for Veterans Chronicles
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is US Army Private first Class Hilbert Margol.
He served on a one hundred five millimeter Howards her
team in B Company, three hundred ninety second Field Artillery
Battalion in the forty second Infantry Division in World War Two.
He was also among the liberators of Dachau concentration Camp
(00:34):
in late April nineteen forty five. Hilbert Margol was born
on February twenty second, nineteen twenty four. He shared his
birthday with his slightly younger twin brother, Howard, and both
of them shared a birthday with our first President. Margol
says the boys were frequently reminded of that for a
very specific reason.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, she always told us every year on our birthday
for many years, since we were born on George Washington's birthday.
We could never tell a lie, and we tried to
honor her statement.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Margol was just a few months shy of his eighteenth
birthday when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December seventh,
nineteen forty one.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Well, we were seniors in high school. That was December seventh,
nineteen forty one. We graduated high school a little over
a month later, January of forty two, And what I
remember about that attack, of course, was the announcement and
(01:35):
then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's statement be a radio to
the entire country what had happened, and the US was
now at war with Japan.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the US into World
War II. A few days later, the country would also
be at war with Italy and Germany. But the Margol family,
which is Jewish, had already been paying close attention to
the worsening situation in Europe out of concern for family
living in Lithuania.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Our father had his youngest sister with her husband and
two or three young children living in Lithuania. He tried
talking her into relocating to the United States. He would
sponsor her and her husband and children, but she felt
(02:30):
at that time Lithuania was safe and they just wanted
to stay there. They used to correspond back and forth
with letters, and finally, when the letters stopped coming from her,
he knew something that was not right, but never really
(02:51):
knew what happened.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Decades later they finally found out what happened. Margle's brother, Howard,
became a professor and took students to Lithuania. On one
of those visits, he found an elderly man who remembered
what happened to Jewish families.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
He told that before the Germans ever arrived in Lithuania,
there was a group called the Lithuanian Bandits. They were
Nazi sympathizers. They rounded up all the Jews in the
town took them out in the woods. First, they took
the young babies by their ankles, swung them around and
(03:31):
hit their heads against trees in the woods while their
parents and other children in the same family had to
stand there and watch. And then they turned around, had
them dig a trench, and they ended up shooting them
all and just burying them in that trench. And that's
(03:52):
when he got the real story and he learned, and
we know all those years, even today, the Lithuanian government
has never wanted the world to know that some of
their own citizens killed a lot of Jewish families before
the German army ever even came into Lithuania, and to
(04:16):
a certain extent, a lot of something similar to that
happened in Poland. The government just more or less suppressed
the information.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
After graduating high school in January nineteen forty two, Margol
and his brother joined the Army. They entered the ROTC
program and began training on one hundred five millimeter howitzers
while stationed in Florida. However, they agreed to switch to
the Army reserves when told it might allow them to
go to college before heading to war, and they did
(04:46):
go to multiple schools before the Army decided they needed
to send a lot more young men to win the war.
Margo eventually returned to working with one hundred five millimeter howitzers,
but he had to fight to get back there after
The Army and n initially had other plans for him.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
And of course when I got to the forty second
Infantry Division, for about the first two maybe three months,
they put me in the infantry until finally they saw
my mo and realized I belonged in the artillery. So
then they after they qualified me on a M one
(05:22):
rifle which was infantry and I got the sharpshoot of
metal and the instructor told me the reason why I
was so good because I never held a gun before
in my life. I didn't have any bad habits he
had to try and break. So it got back to
(05:43):
the artillery.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
The howitzer units were very effective in the war. In fact,
Margol says Germans later told him how surprised they were
by the speed of the US artillery. So what made
American artillery so devastating?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
We had tremendous training. We could do everything in our sleep.
We were so highly trained by the time we shipped
over there was second We could do whatever we had
to do without really thinking a lot. What are the components, Well,
(06:18):
we didn't carry them one rifles. We carried carbine rifles smaller,
same thirty calibers but smaller, lighter, smaller and wouldn't shoot
as far. And UH learned how to be uh uh
handled them one o fives each. We had four one
(06:40):
oh five million horses in our gun battery. Howard was
a gunner on number two. I was a gunner on
number three, and uh we had a sorry. Each gun
had a sergeant, a corporal, and then the gunner was
third in command. And each howard had contained a total
(07:00):
of ten men sergeant, corporal, gunner, truck driver and the
balance for ammunition preparers. And that was a setup, and
we were so highly trained. Once we got the first
fire missions. After a few fire missions, we knew what
(07:21):
the commands were going to follow. So they were preparing
the ammunition even before we got the information because they
knew what was coming next.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
After pulling them out of college, the army had also
split up Margol and his brother Howard into different units
in different parts of the country, and after repeated attempts
to serve together failed, it took some higher authorities to
make it happen.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Three times, he put in a request for transfer to
my outfit in Oklahoma, get back in the artillery, which
we were highly trained for as gunners. So after the
third time nothing happened, he went to his captain, what's
the status of my transfer requests? The captain told him,
(08:07):
my job is to train you, not transfer you. So
with that information he wrote a letter to our mother
telling her the situation. She wrote a letter to President
Roosevelt saying that she wanted us to serve together, and
we wanted to serve back together. Two weeks later, she
(08:27):
got a letter from the White House signed by the
President's aide some general that as a two star mother,
her request would be granted, didn't say whether I'm going
to him or he's coming to me. Two weeks later
she got another letter from the War Department basically saying
the same thing. We still didn't know. Fortunately, she got
(08:51):
the third letter from the one hundred and fourth Division
headquarters saying Howard was going to be transferred to my
outfit at oklahom Oh. That was time for celebration.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
In late nineteen forty four, the Army quickly prepared the
forty second Infantry Division and two others to get to
Europe to fight in the Battle of the Bulge. Not
all of the division made it over in time, including Margol,
but those that did suffered through intense fighting on the
last couple of days at the Bulge. After a couple
of weeks to regroup, the full forty second Division, including Margol,
(09:25):
saw its first action in January nineteen forty five in
southern France.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Well, we still thought we were in training in the
French countryside north of Marseille. They told us it's close
to midnight one night to dig in our howarzers. So
we dug the howarzers in. They told us who put
our camouflage nets over the guns? We thought well, it's
a sale part of the training until early, very early,
(09:51):
the first light next morning shall start flying over our heads. Said, well,
this must be the real thing, and we realized we
were at the time in a village called Wingans or Motor,
the village of WinGen, France, on the Motor River. We
would dug in on one side of the river. The Germans.
(10:14):
On the other side of the river was what the
locals called a mountain. We called it a very high hill.
The Germans were dug in on the other side of
that very high hill. Took us about three days to learn,
due to the difference in the sound, which shells flying
over our heads were from the Germans going towards targets
(10:37):
behind us, and which shells from the one fifty five
milimeter howartzes and the two hundred and forty milimeter howartzes
behind them were firing towards targets behind the German lines
on the other side of the river. You could tell
by the difference in the sound, you learn which shells
(10:58):
were going coming from where.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
And one of the first things Margol learned in combat
was that he was never very far from the howitzers.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
We had sleeping bags so at nightfall we had to
get in our sleeping bags, and throughout combat we never
were more than a few feet or a few yards
away from the howitzer because we had to get ready
(11:27):
for fire missions morning, noon, night. We could get fire
missions at any time because we were in direct support
of the two twenty second Infantry guys right in front
of us. We never put our howartzers inside any city,
town or village. We were always on the outskirts because
(11:48):
the infantry guys were in the city towns or villages
and whatever was holding them up from advancing, that was
the targets that we were firing at.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
That's Hilbert Margol. He's a US Army veteran of World
War Two. In just a moment, the forty second Infantry
Division keeps pushing east and eventually helps to liberate Docou
Concentration Camp. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
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Speaker 1 (13:14):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is Hilbert Margol. He's a US Army veteran
of World War Two, serving as a one hundred and
five millimeter howitzer gunner in the forty second Infantry Division.
After that first combat in southern France, the forty second
Division kept pushing east. Margol tells us what the aftermath
(13:36):
of that fighting looked like. As the division moved along
and eventually moved all the way to the Rhine.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I guess we were in that position for maybe a
couple of weeks, and then we were ordered to pull
out and head north. That's when we went through different towns, villages,
and as each one was captured. Then we would ride
through the village of town city and see various damages
(14:06):
bombed out areas we never knew which rubble was from
our firing or from aerial bombing or tanks, and then
we would move forward. As the infantry moved to the
next village of town, we followed right behind them, but
at some point went to the Hurtkan Forest. I remember
(14:28):
we had a couple of snow days there in the forest,
and then from there we moved forward, crossed over the
Rhine River into Germany, and that would have been late March,
I think late March the twenty fourth, nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Margo also explains how the artillery guys were placed in
one of the safest possible positions during combat, and he
shares some more about where the forty second Infantry division
went as it advanced into Germany.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Well, we were very lucky because I'd say we were
always on the outskirts behind the infantry, so we never
saw any German tanks except those that were knocked out
on the side of the road. We saw a number
of a lot of German soldiers deceased, some Allied soldiers,
(15:24):
also American soldiers deceased, a lot of dead horses because
when the German army ran out a fuel, they grabbed
whatever horses they could find, hooked them up to pull
their vehicles, and they're howarzers, any tank guns, whatever they had,
(15:47):
and we moved on different Wurtzburg Schweinfurt was another experience,
then Nuremberg. After Nuremberg, we actually took over a German
air base in a suburb of Nuremberg called firth if
(16:07):
U r THH and then from there the next military
objective was Munich.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
But it was late April nineteen forty five when Margol
and the rest of the forty second Division made their
way through Germany and were overcome by a powerful and
unusual smell that they then investigated.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And early Sunday morning, April twenty ninth, nineteen forty five.
We were riding on a two lane country road towards Munich,
and I remember seeing road signs. At one point, the
largest sign said dach Haw, meaning the village city of Dachau, Germany.
(16:48):
Below that was smaller arrow signs in both directions, and
one was pointing in the direction of Munich, and it
had Munchren on it, which in Germany Munich number of kilometers.
We converted it to miles and realized we were eight
nine miles north of Munich, Germany. A short time later
(17:13):
we got orders to pull over on the right side
of the road. The smallest cleared area in the wooded
area where our four hours is were the closest together
they had ever been. Everybody smelled a very strong holder,
and we had a number of fire missions towards Munich.
One of our jeep drivers came by and sat on
(17:36):
the woods on the left side of the road. There
must be a chemical factory creating this very strong older.
My brother Howard came over to me. He said, no,
he don't think it's a chemical factory. What it reminds
him of when we were youngsters, our mother would go
to a meat market and buy a freshly killed chicken,
(17:59):
take it home, hold it over the gas flame of
the stove in the kitchen to burn off any remaining
pin feathers from the chicken. He said, in so doing
it would burn some of the skin and the fat
of the chicken. He said, that's what the older reminds
him of. I asked my gum, Sergeant Tom Rogers' permission
(18:22):
for Howard and I if we could go over through
the woods find the source of what causing this very
small odor. He said, okay, go ahead, don't stay long
because we don't know. We just had a lull and
fire missions. We don't know how long we're going to
be there. So Howard and I took off went through
the woods. It took us about ten minutes to get
(18:44):
through the woods. Some people asked, well, how could you
go that quick? And I said, well, the differences between
woods in this country and over there was people that
lived around the woods, probably almost daily would go into
the woods looking for twigs, branches, limbs to take home
(19:04):
to use his firewood. So the floor of the woods
was clear, so you could go pretty quick, different from
this country.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
That's Hilbert Margol, He's a US Army veteran of World
War Two and helped to liberate Docou concentration Camp. Much
more on that straight ahead. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this
is Veterans' Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.
Our guest in this edition is Hilbert Margol. He's a
(19:34):
US Army veteran of World War Two, serving as a
one hundred and five millimeter howitzer gunner in the forty
second Infantry Division. A moment ago, you heard how a
strange and overpowering smell struck the division as it made
its way to Munich. We now pick up that story
as Margol investigates the source of the smell and tells
(19:55):
us what he discovered.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
The first thing we saw was a wide open area
and we saw a lot of railroad box cars. We
crawled over between two box cars in the middle of
the train. First thing box car on our right. About
four or five of the box cars, the sliding doors
were wide open, and the first one on our right
(20:17):
was unique because it was the only one that had
a deceased prisoner's legs hanging out of the box car.
We had a little Brownie box camera. We had liberated
a couple of weeks earlier. The only film we had
was what was inside the camera, so we hadn't taken
any pictures yet. We didn't know how many films we had,
(20:41):
but we took that picture because that was unique, different
from the other box cars. I used that picture and presentations,
which I do quite often. Anyhow, we looked at some
of the other box cars. Every one of them was
just filled jam filled with seized prisoners. We later learned
(21:03):
this train was called the death train. Twenty days earlier,
it left Buchenwald concentration Camp with about twenty five hundred
Jewish prisoners. Took them twenty days to get from there
to where they ended up the day before we arrived,
because sometimes they had to stop to get cold. Sometimes
(21:26):
they had to stop for the trucks to be repaired
so they could move forward. We got there and then
we noticed there was a two story building close by.
We saw some other soldiers go through a gate in
the middle of that building, so we followed them. The
gate had the words on it our bite mach free
(21:49):
in German, which meant work makes you free. So we
just followed the other soldiers through the gate. We looked
around it was a wide open area, which we left
learned was the area that five point thirty every morning,
thirty two thousand prisoners had to fall off a roll
call every early every morning. We didn't see any of
(22:13):
the prisoners because they were told the day before that
the SS general in charge. Because next to the concentration
camp was a much larger German Army SS training camp
that controlled the concentration camp. So we looked around and
in various places we saw stacks of bodies, naked bodies
(22:41):
stacked like cordwood here there. We didn't understand what we
were seeing because we didn't know what happened, Why were
they doing that, what were they It was like a
Hollywood movie set. We later learned after the war that
the Germans had run out of Without cold, they could
(23:02):
not operate the ovens, so that's why these stacks of
bodies were there, because they couldn't cremate them.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Margo also shared plenty of other memories about what he saw, heard, smelled,
and experienced as the nazis unspeakable treatment of their prisoners
became clear.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
No, because they were all in the barracks, we never
saw i am. We learned later that of the thirty
two thousand prisoners, and some of the barracks were strictly
Jewish prisoners, others were Russian prisoners, Russian soldiers that were prisoners,
and people from other parts of Europe, gypsies, whatever they
(23:48):
call them, romas. And I've read all kinds of stories
about what happened before we got there, and the one
book that I two books that I paid attention to
because I know they're factual based on the authors and contents.
(24:10):
And the Germans for each barracks, they appointed a prisoner
in charge of the barracks because they didn't want to
deal with the prisoners on a twenty four hour basis,
so they appoored them. Like prison system in this country
used to have trustees to be in charge of a
(24:30):
certain number of prisoners, the Germans did the same thing.
I'm trying to think of what they called them. I'll
think of it in a minute. They were the ones
in charge of the prisoners, and they were prisoners, and
they were much tougher on the prisoners than the German
soldiers were because they wanted to show the German soldiers
(24:54):
that they were helping them, so they really were tough
on the prisoners. And doing so, they got better treatment,
they got better food, or doing that. I've read stories
that when our units came in to dock How concentration camp,
(25:15):
some of the prisoners came out of the barracks. Of course,
we were there early Sunday morning, April twenty ninth, nineteen
forty five. The official surrender took place at two point
thirty that afternoon. By that time we were on our
way to Munich. These stories claimed that some of the
prisoners took the rifles from the infantry guys to kill
(25:38):
German soldiers. Not true because inside the prisoner camp there
were no German soldiers. There were these trustees. That's who
they killed. They were prisoners, but they didn't like them.
The other prisoners didn't like them at all, and that's
who they killed. When the forty fifth came in, they
(26:01):
came into the German Army camp SS training camp, which
was much larger and next door the trains. The first
three or four cars of that train railroad cars were
open cars filled with dead bodies. And the first forty
(26:22):
fifth Division soldiers that saw all these dead bodies, a
lot of them were wearing these pajama type striped uniforms,
and they rounded up. There was about fifty German young
soldiers Wehrmacht. They rounded them up, and they ran and
(26:43):
set them up like a firing squad, and they fired
and they killed all but three of them. Three survived.
And when General Patton heard about that, he ordered all
pictures to be destroyed, which they were not. We have
pictures of that. I have pictures that that I acquired,
(27:06):
and that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
As we mentioned earlier, Margol is Jewish, and the reality
of the Holocaust has impacted him deeply ever since that
day at Dachau, but he says at the time he
and other troops were mostly unaware of who the concentration
camp prisoners were or why they were there.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
We didn't understand what the camp was all about. We
didn't understand what we were seeing these railroad cars with
all these dead bodies stacked inside. Because we also learned
after the war that the rail cars that left Buchenwald
they packed these prisoners in like sardines wintertime. They put
(27:49):
a porcelain pot in each rail car is the bathroom.
They gave him a loaf of black bread tatus and
that was it. Locked the doors and sent the train
on their way. We learned all this after the war.
We didn't know any of that when we went in
(28:11):
because the concentration camps were not military objectives period.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
But while he says the rank and file troops did
not know anything about the Holocaust until they saw it
with their own eyes, he also says our military and
political leaders were very much aware of it and took
immediate steps to make sure the world would always be
aware of it.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Oh, they knew, sure, Washington knew, political leaders knew, our
command headquarters knew. They knew about it. But there was
not a military objective. As each camp was liberated, I think,
starting with Bougenball, General Eisenhower ordered all commanding officers within
(29:00):
forty miles of fifty miles of each camp was liberated.
He wanted them to spare every soldier they could to
go there and be a witness to what they witnessed,
because even every one of them, and certainly at dark,
howe all the dead bodies. When the first medical units
(29:20):
came in, they totally ignored the dead bodies. It was
too late to save them. They worked on the ones
that were near death. High percentage of those thirty two
thousand prisoners were very ill with Typhus life's born disease.
The Germans had nothing to kill the lice. All they
(29:43):
did each prisoner came in, they shaved all their hair
off one time and that was it.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
After the war, Hilbert Margol and his brother Howard spent
about nine months on occupation duty. Margol describes his first
assignment while awa.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
My brother and I served for nine months after the
war near Salisburg, Austria, and they had different details. We
were both pfc's private first class and it gave us
different details. The first detail we had we stayed in it.
They put us sleeping quarters, living quarters within an whole
(30:21):
monastery and that's where we lived. Near the monastery was
a former Austrian Army stockade. They filled it up with
SS officers. There were prisoners. Early every morning we would
ride in trucks with the prisoners up on the mountain
(30:42):
side to chop down. The prisoners chopped down trees, then
chopped the trees into smaller sized pieces of lumber wood,
filled them into the trucks to take into Salzburg. First
to give to the bakers to use his firewood for
their ovens, to bake bread, and then some for the
(31:05):
army for the stoves and cibilians that lasted.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Some weeks later, Margol and a couple of other soldiers
were sent to Genoa, Italy to meet a US ship
carrying grain. That grain was then poured into railroad cars
normally reserved for carrying liquids. It passed through the Poe
Valley and the Brenner Pass on the way back to Austria.
He also remembers one incident of stopping by a farm
(31:33):
and picking some ripe tomatoes that most certainly added some
flavor to his army rations. In twenty fifteen, seventy years
after the liberation of Dacau, Margol returned for the anniversary events,
and he remembers a brief interaction with then German Chancellor
Angela Merkel.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
So, when I was old, the speakers were coming out
from the front, but it was stopping go because everybody
else was trying to get out. Suddenly I looked to
my right and there was chance for Angela Merkel of
Germany standing right alongside me. I tapped her on her
arm and thanked her for her remarks because she spoke
(32:14):
in English. She saw a cap similar to this one
thanked me for being a liberator.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Now, eighty years after the end of the war, Margol
reflects on what he's most proud of from his service.
He says, it's a great testament that his generation not
only answered the call for military service, but were able
to adapt to whatever the military, the enemy, or anyone
else through at them.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
We just knew it was our time. Ourselves and all
of our fellow soldiers were all raised during the Great Depression.
Most of us all came from poor families. We were
used to hard times, so we were better prepared for
combat than some of the wars that followed this country
(33:01):
after us. We were used to being in tough situations.
We didn't have a lot, so we were able to
acclimate a lot better to combat.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Margo is also eager to tell his story of service
whenever and wherever he can, and of course, a big
reason for that is the profound impact the Holocaust had
on him, the Jewish people, and the world. He says,
there is a very specific reason why he wants as
many people as possible to hear about the Holocaust.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
When I got home, I got married children, never told
my wife or children anything about my military service, and
some years ago before the pandemic, I was interviewed similar
to this for television. They also have a magazine, a
(33:53):
monthly magazine. They asked me some of the same questions
and they asked me for final thought, which they ended
up using to close the program. And the thought that
came to mind that I said at the time that
I hope and pray that the offspring of all the
(34:16):
survivors outlive the offspring of the deniers that the Holocaust,
whether it existed or not. And that's what they used
to close that TV program.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
That's US Army Private first Class Hilbert Margol. He served
on a one hundred and five millimeter howitzer teen in
B Company, three hundred and ninety second Field Artillery Battalion
in the forty second Infantry Division. He was also among
the liberators of Docout concentration Camp in late April nineteen
forty five. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veteran's Chronicles. Hi,
(35:05):
this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow
the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're
at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube
(35:26):
channel for full oral histories and special features, and of
course please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you
get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join
us next time for Veterans Chronicles
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