It was early on April 29, 1945, and American troops pushed toward Munich, Germany, as World War II spiraled toward a protracted close. The 42nd Infantry “Rainbow” Division of the United States Army was moving along a two-lane road about 10 miles outside the city when two of its members — the Margol twins — asked permission from their sergeant to walk through the woods toward a site the troops thought was a chemical plant.
What the brothers found is etched indelibly into Hilbert Margol’s mind nearly 80 years later.
They had walked up to a parked train with its boxcars full of human remains.
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