Mayer Hersh, Jewish Holocaust survivor, who was one of the longest-serving inmates of Auschwitz, has died aged 90.

Mr Hersh from Sieradz, in Western Poland, was 13 when German troops arrived in his hometown and scattered his family. He would never see any of them again.

He was imprisoned in nine concentration camps by the Nazis, including Otoczna, Auschwitz, Stutthof, Gotha, Buchenwald and Theresienstadt. In was from this last camp, in German-occupied Czechoslovakia, that he was liberated by Allied troops in 1945.

Even then, weighing a pitiful four stone, he might not have survived. But he was flown in an RAF bomber directly to Carlisle, where with careful treatment and no small amount of determination he recovered his health.

He devoted much of his life to public speaking, giving eyewitness accounts of the horrors of the Nazi death camps to audiences across the UK. He was appointed MBE in 2013 for his work.

Rabbi Arnold Saunders, of Higher Broughton and Higher Crumpsall Synagogue, told the BBC: "It must have taken a terrible toil on him to talk about his experiences.

"But he saw it as his duty to mankind so people would never forget.

In his time at Auschwitz he met the notorious Josef Mengele, whose cruel experiments on his captives earned him the soubriquet ‘The Angel of Death’. Mr Hersh outlived Mengele by some 37 years.

Born in 1926, Mr Hersh, died peacefully at care home in Prestwich, Greater Manchester on Saturday.