Jerzy Kluger, the late Pope John Paul II's Jewish childhood friend in Poland, died over the weekend at the age of 90 in Rome where he had lived for decades, the ANSA news agency reported.
Kluger, who suffered from Alzheimer's, died Saturday of complications from bronchitis, the news agency quoted hospital sources as saying.
The son of a lawyer and leader of the Jewish community in the southern Polish town of Wadowice, Kluger attended elementary school with Karol Wojtyla, as John Paul II was known before becoming pontiff in 1978.
The pair played football and hockey and learned to ski together, and did their homework at each other's houses, according to biographical works on the late pope.
At the time, Wadowice had about 8,000 Catholics and some 2,000 Jews.
Kluger's sister, a grandmother, and eight of his aunts and uncles died at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. He refused to return to Poland after the war and did not see his friend for many years.
In 1989, he travelled to Poland after John Paul invited him to attend the inauguration of a plaque commemorating the Wadowice synagogue's destruction by the Nazis. He also accompanied the pontiff on a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem in 2000.
The friendship has been credited for the pope's attempts at Catholic rapprochement with the Jewish people, particularly in Poland.
He was the first pontiff to enter a synagogue and to make a pilgrimage to the Auschwitz Nazi extermination camp.