The Communist secret police knew when the late Pope John Paul II liked to shave, how many suitcases he owned, and what card games he played and with whom, decades before he was appointed pontiff.

Polish authorities have reopened an investigation into Second World War crimes committed at Auschwitz and its satellite camps which was closed in the 1980s because of the country’s isolation behind the Iron Curtain.

Poland is seeking the extradition from Israel of an 83-year-old Polish-born Jew on charges of genocide for the deaths of German prisoners in a communist camp he commanded after World War II.