"I was deeply sad to learn about the passing of the great Branko Lustig, the most successful Croatian film producer, actor, prominent collaborator of the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, collaborator of the world's biggest film directors, president of the film Festival of Tolerance, Croatia's only two-time Academy Award winner, winner of the Golden Globe award and an honorary citizen of Zagreb.
"His entire artistic work was marked by the tragedy of the Jewish people, his suffering as a former inmate of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belse and the suffering of his family, killed in concentration camps.
"The life mission of Branko Lustig, as he said, was defined forever by the last words of his fellow sufferers - to tell the world how they lived and how they died. And he did it in the best possible way, with his impressive work on Schindler's List, one of the greatest Holocaust films of all time for which he deservedly won his first Academy Award as well as a Golden Globe award," Plenkovic said in his letter of condolence to the Lustig family.
He recalled that Lustig gave his Academy Award to the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Israel and initiated the establishment of a foundation dedicated to collecting recordings of interviews with Holocaust survivors.
"Branko Lustig tirelessly made movies and he also held lectures at Croatian and international universities and schools for decades, focusing on the education of young people. One of his messages that we must remember is that weapons of mass destruction are not bombs but hate among people, intolerance and blindness and if one forgets that, it would mean that evil has won.
"The truth is that Branko Lustig has won with his artistic and human mission," Plenkovic said in the letter of condolence.
Text: Hina