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Branko Lustig: ‘Schindler’s List’ Producer Donates Oscar To Yad Vashem

By Lindsay McCane
Published on: 04:49 PST, Jul 23, 2015

Branko Lustig, one of the producers of Schindler’s List, donated his Oscar to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and memorial, noting that this was a “good resting place” for the award, on Wednesday, July 22, during a special ceremony in Jerusalem.

Lustig, an 83-year-old Auschwitz survivor and native of Croatia, joined director Steven Spielberg on the 1993 film Schindler’s List, which went on to win seven Academy Awards, Reuters reports.

The film recounts Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist, and his attempts to save nearly 1,200 Jewish people from the Nazis during World War II. He was honored by Israel as “Righteous Among the Nations” and is buried in Jerusalem.

“I’m very honored, I feel this is a good resting place for the Oscar,” Lustig said, prior to the ceremony, which was also attended by Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.

Branko Lustig, a Jewish man born in Croatia, was imprisoned in both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. At the end of the war, he was reunited with his mother. Sadly, however, his father and many other members of his family were killed at the hands of the German Nazis.

In 2011, Lustig returned to Auschwitz, where he served as a prisoner on Hitler’s command, to hold his Bar Mitzvah, a Jewish boy’s right-of-passage. He was denied the ceremony as a child, and wanted to commemorate the moment at the place that took that right from him.

Lustig aslo won an Oscar for his work on the film Gladiator. He explained that he didn’t feel as though he was separating the awards. Rather, he said, “I’m not parting with it, I am leaving it to the nation, for generations to come… All Yad Vashem’s visitors will see it, at my home there is only my wife and my daughter.”

Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem’s chairman, said Lustig’s donation proved that the museum is “a natural center for commemoration and a universal symbol.”

“His decision to separate himself from the award which means so much to a producer, to a creator, and to send it to Yad Vashem for eternity is very meaningful,” Shalev said.

“But this Oscar is also glistening today with the expression of our gratitude and as a beacon of life of the writers of the nations who have taken the right choice in times of darkness,” Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic said, according to Ukraine Today.

[Photo by Kevin Winter / Getty Images]

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