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