The Pope had insisted on walking alone into the camp

Pope Benedict XVI has visited the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in a symbolic end to his tour of Poland.

The German-born Pope walked alone under the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate at the entrance to the camp, where he met survivors and said prayers.

More than a million people, mostly Jews, were killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The Pope had specifically insisted on visiting the camp.

Earlier almost one million Poles gathered in Krakow as he led Mass.

Pope Benedict was to have been driven everywhere during his visit, but the BBC's David Willey at Auschwitz said he wanted to walk around the camp and meditate alone.

After entering the camp, he said a prayer in front of a reconstruction of the execution wall where Nazis lined up and shot thousands of prisoners.

He lit a candle in memory of the victims of Auschwitz, before meeting 32 survivors who had returned to the camp to greet him.

Pope Benedict, a former member of the Hitler Youth, then visited the cell where Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe died in 1941, after offering to take the place of a prisoner whom the Nazis had sentenced to death by starvation.

He then left the camp to visit the nearby Centre of Dialogue and Prayer, where he was greeted by nuns from a nearby convent.

Prayer controversy

The Pope blessed the centre before moving on to the site of the gas chambers of Birkenau, where he will offer prayers in several languages.

It is not clear if he will speak in German, as initially planned.

Some Jewish groups have said a German Pope speaking the language of the Nazis would insult the memory of the million Jews murdered there.

The Pope's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said the pontiff was making his visit to Auschwitz Birkenau as a "son of the German people".

I don't feel any animosity to the people here, even with their prejudices Auschwitz survivor's return

He revealed that the trip was not originally in Benedict's schedule, but that the 79-year-old pontiff had personally insisted on it.

"In the first draft of the itinerary, there was no Auschwitz visit. The pope said 'I want to go to Auschwitz. I cannot not go to Auschwitz'," said the spokesman.

On Saturday, on his first visit to Wadowice, the birthplace of his Polish predecessor John Paul II, the Pope delighted Poles by saying he hoped to see John Paul II made a saint.

He later told hundreds of thousands of young people who had gathered to see him in Krakow to remain true to the teachings of Jesus, and to avoid being influenced by modern secular values.

Some 900,000 people gathered in Krakow on Sunday morning to see the Pope, the largest audience yet on his four-day visit to Poland. He urged the crowds to help spread the Catholic faith.