Branko Lustig

Branko Lustig
Lustig at the LAMOTH 2nd Annual Dinner in 2009
Born	(1932-06-10) 10 June 1932 (age 84) Osijek, Kingdom of Yugoslavia (present-day Republic of Croatia)
Occupation	Film producer
Years active	1955–present
Spouse(s)	Mirjana Lustig (c. 1970–present)

Branko Lustig (born 10 June 1932) is a Croatian film producer. He is the only person born in the territory of present-day Croatia to have won two Academy Awards.

Lustig was born in Osijek, to a Croatian Jewish family. His father, Mirko, was head-waiter at an Osijek Café Central, and his mother, Vilma, was a housewife. Lustig's grandparents, unlike his parents, were religious and he regularly attended the local synagogue with them.

During World War II, as a child he was imprisoned for two years in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Most members of his family perished in the death camps throughout Europe, including his grandmother who was killed in the gas chamber, while his father was killed in Čakovec on 15 March 1945. Lustig's mother survived the Holocaust and was reunited with him after the war. On the day of the liberation, he weighed only 66 pounds (29.94 kg). Lustig credited his survival in Auschwitz to a German officer who happened to be from the same suburb of Osijek as Lustig. He overheard Lustig crying and asked him who his father was. It turned out the officer had known Lustig's father.

Lustig began his film career in 1955 as an assistant director at Jadran Film, a state-owned Zagreb-based film production company. In 1956 he worked as a unit production manager on Branko Bauer's World War II drama Ne okreći se sine, winner of three Golden Arena awards at the 1956 Pula Film Festival. Lustig was the location manager for Fiddler on the Roof (film) (1971). In the 1980s Lustig worked on the miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and its sequel War and Remembrance (1988). He moved to the United States in 1988.