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Eighty years ago, he photographed liberation of Nazi camps with Eisenhower

Leo Moore was the general’s photographer during WWII and made a name for himself in showbiz too.

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Photographer Lt. Leo Moore (left) and videographer Technical Sgt. Jack Howell covered Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's trips to Europe in November 1944.
Contributed / Library of Congress

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. “Get it all on record now,” he said, “get the films, get the witnesses, because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say this never happened.”

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

From horse barn to Hollywood

Leo Moore, born in Oakes in 1904, was Eisenhower’s personal photographer throughout World War II. He traveled everywhere with the general — 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?

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Leo Moore's senior photo from Davenport (Iowa) High in 1923.
Contributed / Davenport High Yearbook via E-Yearbooks

The oldest child of Elza and Sarah “Sadie” 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 “Mickey Moore.” She found some success in the movies and later married a cameraman.

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Whether he followed his sister west, she followed him, or they simply ended up in the same place by coincidence isn’t 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 ‘married’, but her husband isn’t listed in the 1930 U.S. Census as living in the home in Los Angeles.

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A newspaper story from Iowa announces the marriage of Anastasia "Mickey" Moore to a Hollywood cameraman. Anastasia and her brother, Leo, were both born in Oakes, N.D.
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.

From Hollywood to horror

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’s 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’s shadow, occupying the same quarters, traveling in the same jeeps and planes and recording nearly every moment of the general’s 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 — photographing scenes too unbelievable and harrowing to comprehend, yet too important to ignore.

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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 — 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.

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Gen. Dwight Eisenhower visited Ohrdruf concentration camp and insisted lawmakers, journalists and other military leaders join him so in the future no one could claim the Holocaust didn't happen.
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.

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

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During a tour of the newly liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany, an Austrian Jewish survivor describes to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and his entourage the use of the gallows in the camp.
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.

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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.

“I 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.”

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 — a peaceful ending for a man who had once stood witness to humanity at its worst.

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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.

Tracy Briggs has more than 35 years of experience, in broadcast, print, and digital journalism.
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