Tribute to the memory of Pope John Paul's Jewish friend...

Jewish born Jerzy Kluger who grew up with Karol Wojtyla in Wadowice died in Rome on New Year's eve . Mr Kluger was 92 years old.

Although the two men lost track of each other during the war years, following the election to the See of Peter of his former childhood friend in 1978, Mr Kluger renewed that friendship.

A bond intensified during historic moments such as the 1986 visit to Rome's Synagogue when Blessed John Paul II spoke of Jews as "our beloved elder brothers", or again during the visit to the' Yad Vashem' holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

Despite the fact that in this archive interview with Veronica Scarisbrick which precedes both those events Mr Kluger explains how the holocaust was a subject his friend the Polish Pontiff avoided speaking to him about: "We don't talk very often about it because for me those years , those memories are very very painful. I am Jewish and my father was the last President of the Jewish community in Wadowice. And during the war we did a tremendous mistake. That's to say we went into the army, my father and myself and we left my mother , sister and grandmother in Wadowice . We thought that they wouldn't do anything to them because they were women instead they all died in Auschwitz." ...

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