The Führer and his buildings: picture documents Miniature "button book" issued for charitable contributions by the Winter-hilfswerk des Deutschen Volkes

Mark C. Levy was born on January 1, 1926, to Esther and Nathan Levy in Pittsburgh, PA. They moved to Los Angeles in 1941. After his graduation from high school, Mark enlisted in the United States Army. Lieutenant Levy served as a tank commander in the 4th Armored Division which spearheaded the advance through to Germany of the Third Army under General George S. Patton. The division was deployed in France on July 13, 1944. On December 26, it relieved the 101st Airborne which had been trapped for days in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. The division crossed the Rhine into Germany in late March 1945. On April 4, they liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp, a subcamp of Buchenwald and the first concentration camp freed by US troops. The unit was in Czechoslovakia when the war ended in May. Mark then was transferred to the Intelligence Corps and was present at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Upon his return to the US, he entered UCLA. He married Peachy in 1949 and the couple would have three children. Mark had a successful career as a builder/developer. He was recalled to the army for the Korean War, 1950-1953. After his discharge, he re-entered the building business. He later collaborated on film projects, including a WWII film, Where Eagles Dare. Mark and Peachy were very involved with their synagogue, Leo Baeck Temple, where Mark was president, as well as the wider Jewish community where they were involved with multiple charities. He was a founder and member of Markon, a Jewish aid organization. Mark, 88, died on February 18, 2014.

Heinrich Hoffmann (1885-1957) was a German photographer and Nazi propagandist. The son and nephew of photographers, he worked in the Hoppé studio in London before setting up in Munich as a portraitist and photojournalist. His photograph of cheering crowds on 2 August 1914 unwittingly captured the young Adolf Hitler, an event which would later benefit Hoffmann's career. Drifting to the far right after the First World War and revolutionary events in Bavaria, he joined the Nazi Party in 1920 and convinced an initially camera-shy Hitler of photography's political value. Hoffman’s assistant, Eva Braun, became Hitler’s mistress in 1930. After 1933, his virtual monopoly of Hitler photographs, as ‘the man who sees the Führer for us’, made him one of the Third Reich's major profiteers. His scenes of carefully constructed intimacy, presenting his master, especially in the regime's early years, as a clean-living, nature-loving man of the people, were massively disseminated. After 1945, though claiming to have been a mere chronicler of events, he was fined and imprisoned. His extensive photo archive survives, including photographs of German political and religious figures, as well as actors, painters, and musicians.

The book was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2006 by Mark C. Levy.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Mark C. Levy