A film poster for “4 Million Bullets: The Untold Fight for Survival.” Photo: 4 Million Bullets.

JNS.org – Producer and director Jeff Hoffman has started editing his trailblazing documentary, “4 Million Bullets: The Untold Fight for Survival,” which tells the pre-state story of Israel’s military.

The documentary details the secret initiative of wealthy Jewish businessmen, in 1945, to raise $190 million for the purchase of airplanes, arms and ships to be smuggled to the emerging Israel Defense Forces. In a twist, some of the supplies that eventually reached the new Zionist army through the elaborate smuggling network included Nazi weapons that were seized in Europe.

Hoffman—a nephew of an Auschwitz death camp survivor—has worked on famed television shows and music videos such as “60 Minutes,” “Melrose Place” and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

The producer’s latest work, the self-funded “4 Million Bullets” documentary series, was inspired by his late grandfather, Leo Quint, who personally assisted the effort to supply Israelis with work vans that were converted into ambulances.

“My Zionist grandfather shot 8mm black-and-white movies covering some 20 years…I mentioned [the footage] to my dentist…and he said, ‘Do you know about the secret bullet factory in Israel?’ A fake kibbutz, Machon Ayalon, was built, disguised as a bakery and laundromat, and young volunteers worked around the clock underground making bullets used in the War of Independence. I researched it and was hooked,” Hoffman told the Daily Item newspaper last year.

Hoffman’s production company, Squashhouse Media, said the 90-minute documentary captures “a brand new perspective on a story that has never been told” and displays “the courage and ingenuity of a generation that is almost gone, and a nation that came together to fight for survival.” The film is set for release in the summer of 2017.