R.I.P. Branko Lustig (1932-2019)

Brank Lustig

On November 14, 2019, film producer Branko Lustig passed away at the age of 87 in Zagreb, Croatia. He is currently the only person in history from the territory of present-day Croatia to have won two Oscars. Over the course of his career, he produced meaningful dramas that reflected his personal connections to the Holocaust and general oppression. He won Best Picture twice for the films Schindler's List and Gladiator. From then he continued to use his influence to good, making Hollywood a more empathetic place while making great art. He will be missed. 

Lustig was born on June 10, 1932, in Osijek, Yugoslavia. He would regularly attend local synagogue with his grandparents despite his parents not being overtly religious. During World War II, he spent two years in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen where most of his family perished. He would later meet his surviving mother, but by the end, he only weighed 66 pounds. When asked why he thinks that he survived as long as he did, he believes that it was because of a prison guard. The guard was from the same Osijek neighborhood as Lustig was and personally knew his father. 

His film career began in 1955 as an assistant director at Jadran Film, a state-owned Zagreb-based film production company. In 1956, he was a unit production manager on the World War II drama Ne okreci se sine. He was later a location manager for Fiddler on the Roof before moving onto the miniseries The Winds of War and its sequel War and Remembrance before moving to the United States in 1988. In 1993 he produced Steven Spielberg's Holocaust drama Schindler's List. He also had a small role as a nightclub maitre d'. The film would go on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards and quickly became considered one of the best films of the director's career. He also won another Oscar for producing the epic Gladiator in 2001. He would go on to create the independent production company Six Point films, which was scheduled to "produce meaningful, thought-provoking independent films." 

Because of the Holocaust, he was unable to have his bar mitzvah until 2011. He held it in front of barrack No. 24a at Auschwitz. It was where he was a prisoner at the time he was 13. This was done during a ceremony for March of the Living, an educational tour of Poland and Israel for high school students. He remained active with the community up until his death, splitting his time between Los Angeles, CA and Zagreb. He was elected in 2017 as a member of the Zagreb City Assemble but declined to take his seat. Over the course of a career, he helped to raise awareness of tolerance and acceptance in international affairs. The films he worked on speak for themselves and the results will continue to entertain as well as inform for decades to come.