Opinion: A trip down memory lane with Holocaust survivor and Oscar winner Branko Lustig
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Patt Morrison recently interviewed Holocaust survivor Branko Lustig -- on Hitler’s birthday, of all days. ‘I’m alive, and they are all dead,’ he told her. The Oscar-winning producer of ‘Schindler’s List’ has dedicated much of his life to keeping the history of the Holocaust alive. From their conversation:
You’ve devoted your life to film and to telling some of these stories on film; now it’s your story being told.I never forgot. When I got my first Academy Award, I told the audience: ‘I promised myself when I was liberated that I will tell the story of these people who died there. When they were hanging in front of us, the people said, ‘Don’t forget us, please. Tell this story to the world.’’’ And I am telling the story when I can.In Zagreb, the fifth [Jewish] film festival [I’ve organized] is dedicated to the women in the Holocaust. We are starting with a movie [by] a filmmaker called [Vanda] Yakubovskaya, shot in Auschwitz in 1947, the first movie shot [there]. Then we have ‘Out of the Ashes,’ [about] a woman doctor in Auschwitz, and ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ [which] I shot with Meryl Streep in Zagreb. We have ‘Inside Hana’s Suitcase,’ a Japanese movie; it’s fantastic. We show it to children, and I explain the Holocaust, how I survived.
Check out his 1993 acceptance speech for best picture, awarded to ‘Schindler’s List.’
For his next act: A bar mitzvah, 65 years late.
Continue reading his conversation with Morrison here.
--Alexandra Le Tellier
