Jewish War Veteran Margol Celebrates Turning 102

In February, a local hero and veteran celebrated an incredible milestone at a meeting of the Jewish War Veterans – his 102nd birthday. Hilbert “Hibby” Margol, the older by 10 minutes of identical twins, and not one to speak much of himself, had only a little to say on the event itself.

“They had called me in advance to know what kind of cake I want. I said, ‘well, if you insist on a cake, let’s make it vanilla on the inside – that’s for me, and chocolate icing on top – that’s in memory of my wife. She passed away Sept. 22 of last year.’”

He had much more to say, however, on the stories he has dedicated the last decade-and-a-half to telling, after many more years of silence.

“Until about 16 or 17 years ago, I never told my wife or my three children that I was ever even in the military,” said Margol. “It just wasn’t something to talk about.”

This all changed when he was invited to the international March of the Living in Poland. After returning home, he showed some pictures to his neighbors who said he couldn’t keep those stories to himself and helped him set up an event at the Dunwoody Library.

“Just with word-of-mouth advertising. I was really almost shocked when we got there and over 90 people showed up,” said Margol, who, influenced by this, decided he might as well start talking about it more. And he certainly did.

“I stopped counting when I did my 200th presentation,” he said, discussing how he’s talked in various locations across the U.S. and Europe. “I don’t know where I’m at now, but by now I might be close to 300, not counting all the interviews I’ve done over the years.”

He often discusses how he and his brother, Howard (z’l), ended up in the military, originally joining the ROTC and training as gunners at the University of Florida in Gainesville, before a military recruiter came and suggested if they joined Army Reserve at the time, there was a good chance they’d get to stay in college until they got their degree. But then, in January 1943, before graduating, they were called up for active duty.

“That’s when we realized the recruiter was only talking to the senior ROTC students. He didn’t mean to make that remark to the freshmen, I guess.”

Refusing officer training, as the promotions would cause them to be split up, they opted for a new program, the Army Specialized Training Program, which sent them to college to get trained in engineering.

“We said ‘Going back to college? That’s us!’”

Unfortunately, this program was cancelled after two months, and the brothers were split up. It took no less than a letter from their mother to President Roosevelt himself to get them back together, and they were finally where they would be for the rest of the war, with an artillery division headed to France, and later, Germany.

The other topic he often discusses is the experience when they found the outskirts of the camp at Dachau. The first thing they noticed was the smell, which led a fellow officer to think there was a chemical plant nearby.

“My brother was very close to me so he came over and said he didn’t think it was a chemical factory. Said the odor reminded him of when we were kids, and our mother used to go to a kosher meat market and buy a freshly killed chicken, take it home and hold it over the gas flame on the stove in the kitchen, and burn off any remaining pin feathers. In so doing, it would burn off some of the skin and the fat of the chicken. He said that’s what the odor reminded him of.”

“Then, we saw in three or four places, stacks of bodies in the nude, stacked like cordwood. We didn’t know what we were seeing. We didn’t understand what we were seeing, because we didn’t know anything about such camps. We thought maybe they were setting all this up to make a movie or something,” said Margol. “We later learned that some months earlier the Germans had run out of coal. Without coal, they could not operate the ovens. So that’s why they left the bodies there.”

Margol has since made it his mission to discuss these events and share the photos and stories and perspectives that are growing rarer and rarer as veterans and survivors pass on. He remains staunch in his hope to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.

“While I’m against wars, I feel they can be necessary – like I feel the current war in Iran was necessary,” said Margol. “But other than that, wars should not happen, period. Because everybody loses, nobody is a real winner. That’s just the way I look at it.”

He intends to continue speaking about his experiences, though he is slowing down just a bit, with only one international trip this year, heading to speak at Normandy on June 1.