More than 70 well-wishers filled the Berman Commons auditorium on Sunday morning, Feb. 18, to honor World War II veteran and liberator Hibby (Hilbert) Margol just days before his 100th birthday on Feb. 22. The event was organized by the Jewish War Veterans of Atlanta (Post 112).
A number of dignitaries and elected officials, including Georgia’s two United States senators, Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, sent greetings of congratulations that were acknowledged at the event. Representatives from the Vietnam War Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars presented Margol with meaningful recognitions for his continued service and personal sacrifice to our country.
As a 19-year-old Army Infantrymen, Hibby and his twin brother, Howard, were among the first American soldiers to witness the horrors of the Dachau killing camp in Germany. As Margol tells it, on April 29, 1945, as his company approached the area, a strong and peculiar odor was noticed. The Margol brothers received permission to go investigate, with some thinking it might be a chemical plant. Instead, they found the terrible smell coming from a long line of train boxcars containing the bodies of Jewish camp prisoners. Some of the cars had been opened by the very first American soldiers on the scene shortly before the Margols arrived. A photograph the brothers took with a Brownie camera documenting their sad discovery was given to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
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Twin brothers, Hilbert (Hibby) and Howard Margol, are pictured during their specialized Army training.
More bodies were found as they ventured into the camp itself, but at the time they didn’t understand what exactly they had come upon. As Margol explained, “The concentration camps weren’t military targets, so we [the GIs on the ground] didn’t know much about them.”
It wasn’t until years later they learned that the…
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