TOKYO, Aug. 2 Kyodo -- Shinshin Aoki, the curator of the only museum in Japan dedicated to those who died at the Auschwitz concentration camp, died Wednesday of esophageal cancer at a Fukushima Prefecture hospital, his family said Friday. He was 67.

Aoki's funeral will be held Friday, attended only by close relatives, according to his family.

The Tokyo native held 110 exhibits of photographs and the personal effects of Auschwitz victims across Japan from the late 1980s.

After funds were gathered so that the items could be exhibited permanently, the Auschwitz peace museum opened on April 16, 2000, in the town of Shioya, Tochigi Prefecture, leasing part of its collection from Poland's state Auschwitz museum.

But the museum was forced to relocate at the end of March, as the owner of the land on which the museum is built was selling it.

Aoki had been aiming for relocation in Shirakawa in neighboring Fukushima Prefecture.