In Our Own Hands: The Hidden Story

Lively interviews and rare archival footage tell the story of a rag-tag group of Jewish volunteers from Palestine who battled to become a fighting unit in the British army. Many of them had narrowly escaped Hitler, leaving friends and family behind. In 1945, they entered combat against the Germans in Northern Italy, but that is where the story begins. Now in their seventies and eighties, brigade veterans vividly recall unsanctioned clandestine operations to find Jewish survivors and spirit them away to southern Italy, where ships to Palestine awaited. These "ordinary Jewish boys" stole trucks, weapons and ammunition out of British war depots, smuggled arms to Palestine and organized a covert operation to hunt down former Gestapo and SS officers. The film reveals the intricate political maneuvering of Zionist leaders who were able to convince British authorities first to agree to a Jewish fighting unit and secondly to allow it to fly the Israeli flag. The brigade formed the nucleus of an army that would later defeat the British to create the state of Israel.

Director Chuck Olin began his film career in Chicago in the late 1960's, co-producing with his partners at The Film Group award-winning documentaries about the social unrest of the time. In the mid-1970's Mr. Olin formed his own production company, Chuck Olin Associates, Inc., and continued to produce and direct documentaries in a wide range of areas. Mr. Olin is a graduate of Harvard College. He and his wife Nancy, an advertising executive with Fallon-McElligott, lives in Chicago.