Zagreb (AFP)
Croatian film producer Branko Lustig, a Holocaust survivor, who received Oscars for "Schindler's List" and "Gladiator", died Thursday in Zagreb at the age of 87, the agency reported Hina official.
Born in the city of Osijek (eastern Croatia) in June 1932 to Croatian Jewish parents, he was deported to Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen during the Second World War. Most of his family members have died in camps across Europe.
"My number is A3317, between Auschwitz and here, the road was long," he said, according to the Croatian press, when he received in 1993 an Oscar for the production of the "Schindler's List" of Steven Spielberg. "Those who were dying left me an inheritance, telling, if I survived, what had happened".
Branko Lustig studied acting in Zagreb in the 1950s before starting to work in cinema, first as a small hand, then as a director and producer.
He has directed and produced more than a hundred Croatian and foreign films, including co-productions such as "Le Tambour" in 1979 and "Le Choix de Sophie" in 1982, two Oscar-winning films.
He moved to the United States in the 1980s, where he received an Emmy in 1990 for the mini television series "Drug Wars: The Camarena Story".
In 2000, he received an Oscar, alongside producers David Franzoni and Douglas Wick, for "Gladiator" Ridley Scott. He also participated in the production of "The Fall of the Black Falcon" by Ridley Scott.
He returned to Croatia about ten years ago when he chaired the annual Jewish Film Festival in Zagreb. In May, he was made an honorary citizen of the Croatian capital for his "immense contribution to culture in a democratic society, to the art of cinema and to the culture of understanding between (the) different" peoples.
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