Chicago native Chuck Olin, an award-winning filmmaker known for his 1998 documentary about the only all-Jewish fighting unit during World War II, died January 20 near Mill Valley, Calif. He was 68.

During a 40-year career, Olin churned out corporate films and documentaries that focused on human rights and social justice issues.

But he gained widespread attention with “In Our Own Hands: The Hidden Story of the Jewish Brigade in World War II,” which followed a British army unit created in 1944 and composed of Jews from Palestine.

After the war, many of its 5,000 members set up an underground railroad to move refugees across Europe to Palestine and formed clandestine hit squads to track down and assassinate Nazi collaborators.

“What I’m most grateful for, and proud of, is that we managed to save this little-known chapter in Jewish history at the last possible moment, when it could still be told by those who lived it,” Olin said.

Among his credits are “Out of the Silence: The Fight for Human Rights,” which chronicled the modern human rights movement around the world; and 1977’s “Palette of Glass,” an Emmy winning documentary about the stained-glass panels artist Marc Chagall designed for the U.S. bicentennial.

Olin worked for his family’s ice cream business in Chicago before launching his movie career in the 1960s as a member of the Film Group, which captured the era’s social turmoil with films about the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the Black Panthers.