Poland's oldest former Auschwitz prisoner dies at 108

Dobrowolski's son informed the museum about his father's death, its press office told Reuters on Monday.

Dobrowolski, a former teacher, was arrested in the southern Polish city of Radom on June 6 1942, and brought to the Auschwitz death camp immediately afterwards. He was moved on to Gross-Rosen camp and finally to Sachsenhausen, where he was freed when the war ended.

Dobrowolski, who was not Jewish, was detained beause he belonged to a forbidden teachers' organisation that flouted a Nazi ban by teaching primary school students about Polish history.

When the war ended, Dobrowolski moved to the small city of Debno, where he was for many years headmaster of a local high school.

During Nazi Germany's World War Two occupation of Poland, the Nazis killed some 1.5 million people in Auschwitz, located near the Polish village Oswiecim. Most those killed were Jewish.

The German occupation of Poland resulted in the deaths of almost 20 percent of the population and over 90 percent of the country's Jewish minority. DM

Photo: Prisoners of Auschwitz.