MORE than 150 gynaecological and surgical instruments from the Nazi German Auschwitz death camp have been found in a nearby house in Oswiecim, southern Poland.

"This is one of the greatest discoveries in recent years," said Bartosz Bartyzel, a spokesman for the Auschwitz museum.

"Everything indicates that these instruments were used by the gynaecologist Carl Clauberg."

Clauberg, a physician and member of the SS, experimented with methods for the mass sterilisation of women.

Hundreds of women held prisoner at Auschwitz whom he used in pseudo-medical experiments died due to the procedures he performed.

As the Red Army drove out the Nazis from the region of occupied Poland where the Auschwitz camp was located in January 1945, Clauberg was transferred to the notorious Ravensbrueck women's concentration camp near Berlin where he continued his experiments.

Taken prisoner by the Russians in June 1945, Clauberg was sentenced to 25 years behind bars before being sent to West Germany in 1955.

He was charged again on the basis of complaints filed by survivors. He died in 1957.

The gynaecological and surgical instruments were found in a house that was located inside a strictly closed zone surrounding Auschwitz during World War II.

Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of Nazi Germany's death camps, is located in the southern Polish town of Oswiecim, which like all of Poland was under German occupation during the war.

It was first established to hold Polish political prisoners, but became the Nazis' main instrument in their genocide against European Jews.

Between 1940 and 1945, Nazi Germany killed some 1.1 million people, including a million European Jews, at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Other victims included Poles, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war.