Holocaust Survivor and "Schindler's List" Producer Gives His Oscar to Yad Vashem Museum

News Staff : Jul 24, 2015
JNS News

"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." -Avner Shalev

(Israel)—Auschwitz death camp survivor Branko Lustig, who was one of the producers of Steven Spielberg's award-winning 1993 movie "Schindler's List," this week, presented the Academy Award he had received for his work on the film to Israel's Jerusalem-based Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. (Photo: from "Schindler's List"/via Universal Pictures)

"I'm very honored, I feel this is a good [resting place] for the Oscar," Lustig told Reuters. "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."

The 83-year-old Lustig was born in Croatia and survived both the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. The Yad Vashem ceremony was attended by Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, who said the donated Oscar statue is a "beacon of light" and a reminder of the sacrifices made by non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust.

"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," said Yad Vashem's chairman, Avner Shalev.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.