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Branko Lustig, an Oscar-winning Croatian film producer and Holocaust survivor, died Thursday. He was 87.
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The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem said Lustig died in Zagreb, the capital of his native Croatia. No other details were immediately released.
Lustig is best known for winning Academy Awards for Best Picture for Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” and for Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator.”
He was also an assistant director on Volker Schlondorff’s Oscar-winning “The Tin Drum” (1979) and was a local production supervisor on Alan J. Pakula’s “Sophie’s Choice” (1982), another Oscar winner.
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Branko Lustig, left, with Steven Spielberg and their Oscars for Schindler's List
(צילום: באדיבות יד ושם)
Lustig was born in the eastern Croatian town of Osijek, which was part of the Yugoslavia at the time. In World War II, he was imprisoned at Auschwitz death camp and later in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
At the age of 78, Lustig returned to Auschwitz, where he was imprisoned at the age of 10, to celebrate his bar mitzvah.
Most members of Lustig’s family were slain during the wartime rule of Croatian pro-Nazi puppet Ustasha regime.
“Branko Lustig’s life story is interwoven with the tragic history of the Holocaust,” said Yad Vashem Visual Center Director Liat Benhabib.
“He made it his life’s mission to tell the story of the Holocaust.”
Lustig donated his Oscar for Schindler's List to the museum, saying it was "the place where the award should be kept after my death."
Croatian media and officials have praised Lustig as the nation’s most successful and most prominent film producer. Croatia’s capital declared Lustig an honorary citizen for promoting democratic values, culture and tolerance.
“Only a supreme act of creation could express the horrific experience of a boy who has known life and death in the Nazi death camps,” Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said.
Australian actor Russell Crowe, who played the lead role of Maximus Decimus Meridius in "Gladiator," also paid tribute to Lustig on Thursday.
"What an amazing life he led," Crowe wrote on Twitter. "From the horrors of WWII to the glory of two Academy Awards. He said to me once “you disagree with me a lot, but you’re always my friend on the days I need you”. Yes. Much love Branko. Always your friend."
Itamar Eichner and Omer Shachnai contributed to this report