Wilhelm Brasse, who as a prisoner at Auschwitz was forced to photograph the experiments of Doctor Josef Mengele, died on Tuesday aged 95.
Brasse’s work at the concentration camp also included taking photographs of his fellow inmates for identity cards, resulting in a collection of 39,000 images that survived the war.
He died in Zywiec, southern Poland, Auschwitz-Birkenau museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki said.
With the Soviet Red Army approaching, on January 17, 1945, Brasse’s Nazi commander ordered him to burn all his negatives, but they turned out to be non-flammable and so were saved.
Born in 1917 into an ethnic Austrian family, Brasse worked as a photographer in southern Poland.
At the outbreak of World War II, he refused to sign the “Volksliste” pledging allegiance to Nazi Germany and joined the Polish army instead.
Captured by the Nazis during an attempt to cross the Hungarian border in 1940, he became prisoner 3,444 at Auschwitz-Birkenau.