歪歪漫画

Eighty years ago, as World War II was coming to an end, Allied forces uncovered the horror the Nazis had tried to hide.

As troops liberated concentration camps across Europe in 1945, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower insisted on documenting everything. 鈥淕et it all on record now,鈥� he said, 鈥済et the films, get the witnesses, because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say this never happened.鈥�

And right there with him 鈥� camera in hand, heart likely heavy 鈥� was a kid from Oakes, North Dakota.

Leo Moore, born in Oakes in 1904, was Eisenhower鈥檚 personal photographer throughout World War II. He traveled everywhere with the general 鈥� from London war rooms to the beaches of Normandy, through the liberated towns of France, and ultimately to the concentration camps whose images would shake the conscience of the world.

And it was Leo who brought some of those images into American living rooms.

How did a young man from the prairies end up at the very heart of history?

Contributed / Davenport High 歪歪漫画 Yearbook via E-Yearbooks

The oldest child of Elza and Sarah 鈥淪adie鈥� Moore, Leo Moore spent his early years in Oakes, where his father ran a livery stable on the windswept plains of southeastern North Dakota.

The family later moved west to Montana to operate a cattle ranch and eventually settled in Davenport, Iowa, where Moore graduated from high school in 1923. In his senior photo, Moore looks less like an awkward Midwestern teen and more like a debonair Clark Gable-in-training. His pencil-thin mustache and a confident stare might just hint at his future in Hollywood.

It seems the whole Moore family may have caught the showbiz bug. After high school, his younger sister, Anastasia, headed to California and reinvented herself with the screen name 鈥淢ickey Moore.鈥� She found some success in the movies and later married a cameraman.

Whether he followed his sister west, she followed him, or they simply ended up in the same place by coincidence isn鈥檛 entirely clear. Still, by 1930, Leo Moore was living in Los Angeles with his wife, Irene, and working as a sound technician for a movie studio.

Also living in the home were his younger brother, Hugh, who worked in the same field, and their mother, Sadie, who had opened a beauty parlor called Madame Moore's on Hollywood Boulevard. She operated the business with her daughter Anastasia.

Sadie Moore is listed as 鈥榤arried鈥�, but her husband isn鈥檛 listed in the 1930 U.S. Census as living in the home in Los Angeles.

Contributed / Quad-City Times, Davenport, Iowa. Tue, Oct 16, 1928, via Newspapers.com

By 1940, Leo Moore was working as a projectionist for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. But more important events were brewing. Overseas, the world was at war and America was inching closer to joining in the fight.

After the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, Moore traded the glamour of Hollywood for the gravity of war. He enlisted and was quickly assigned to public relations, arriving in London in early 1942. He was based just across the street from Winston Churchill鈥檚 office.

It was there that Eisenhower took note of Moore's skill and selected him to serve as his personal photographer. From then on, he was Ike鈥檚 shadow, occupying the same quarters, traveling in the same jeeps and planes and recording nearly every moment of the general鈥檚 wartime leadership.

He was there for the planning of D-Day. He was there in the liberated villages and cities. And he was there as Eisenhower stepped into the newly liberated Nazi concentration camps 鈥� photographing scenes too unbelievable and harrowing to comprehend, yet too important to ignore.

The first Nazi concentration camp liberated by U.S. forces was Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald. When American soldiers entered on April 4, 1945, they were overwhelmed by horrors that assaulted every sense 鈥� piles of decomposing corpses, the anguished cries of emaciated survivors and the unbearable stench of death.

Just one week later, General Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the site, accompanied by Generals George S. Patton and Omar Bradley.

Contributed / Public Domain Image / National Archives and Records Administration, College Park / Source Record ID: 111-SC-443273

After his visit, Eisenhower cabled General George C. Marshall, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, describing his trip to Ohrdruf:

The things I saw beggar description. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda.'

Eisenhower wanted the world to know what happened in the concentration camps. He wanted members of Congress and journalists to come to the newly liberated camps too so that they could convey the truth about Nazi atrocities to the American public. For those who couldn't witness the horrors in person, photographers like Moore played a crucial role in telling the story.

馃帴To watch video of Eisenhower's visit, go to .
WARNING: The film contains shocking and graphic images.

Contributed / National Archives and Records Administration

Moore and Eisenhower remained close even after the war. Leo traveled with him to New York City for the ticker-tape parade that celebrated the Allied victory. In later years, he visited Eisenhower at the White House and played golf with him in Palm Springs.

Moore eventually retired from the military reserves as a major.

Back in civilian life, he returned to MGM, where he worked for 37 years and became head studio projectionist. He was also a labor leader, serving as vice president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and helping establish the Motion Picture Health and Welfare system.

A talented photographer and painter, he exhibited his work widely and helped organize art shows for film industry workers.

He was also keen to help young photographers. 

One young photographer shared his recollection on the online forum Reddit.

鈥淚 had the privilege of going to the home of Eisenhower's personal photographer, Leo Moore, in the early '80s with our high school photo class. He showed us many famous pictures he took of the atrocities at the concentration camp. It was quite sobering to think of him right behind the lens of those horrific scenes. I will never forget those images.鈥�

Moore died on July 22, 1981, at age 77. His family noted in his obituary that he passed away shortly after finishing a round of golf with friends 鈥� a peaceful ending for a man who had once stood witness to humanity at its worst.

What he saw in 1945 never left him. But because the kid from Oakes, North Dakota, dared to lift his camera, the world could never look away.