Personal Life
Lustig received the Order of Duke Trpimir by President Franjo Tuđman for his work on the film. In 2008 he became the first filmmaker ever and second in the field of arts (only one along with Vladimir Nazor) to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Zagreb.
The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust honored Branko Lustig at his 2nd Annual Dinner on November 8, 2009 at the Beverly Hills Hotel for his long-time commitment to Holocaust education and commemoration.
Lustig is honorary president and one of the founding members of the Jewish Movie Festival in Zagreb. On September 16, 2010 Lustig was awarded with honorary citizenship of Osijek.
Lustig celebrated his bar mitzvah on May 2, 2011 at Auschwitz, in front of barrack No. 24 a. He missed his rite of passage as a 13-year-old because at the time he was a prisoner in the very same barrack, having been deported from his Croatian hometown Osijek to the death camp when he was 10. In spite of that he himself consider as atheist, Lustig always stayed deeply connected with Jewish tradition and culture.
Lustig resides between Los Angeles and Zagreb, and calls both of the cities his home, altough in the Jutarnji list interview from September, 2012 he stated: But more and more, slowly, I am returnig to Zagreb. I'm coming back.
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“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To ‘see the light’ too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)