Shinshin Aoki, curator of the only museum in Japan dedicated to those who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp, died Wednesday of esophageal cancer at a Fukushima Prefecture hospital, his family said Friday. He was 67.
From the late 1980s, the Tokyo native held 110 exhibitions across Japan featuring photographs and personal effects of victims of the infamous Nazi death camp.
After funds were gathered to exhibit the items permanently, the Auschwitz peace museum opened April 16, 2000, in Shioya, Tochigi Prefecture, with part of the collection leased from Poland's state Auschwitz museum.
The museum was forced to relocate at the end of March, as the owner of the land on which the museum stands was selling the plot.
Aoki, while undergoing treatment for cancer, had been trying to relocate the museum to Shirakawa in neighboring Fukushima Prefecture.