A Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned at Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps before going on to create an organisation to fight antisemitism has died.

Charles Palant, who was 93 , co-founded the Movement against Racism and Antisemitism and for Peace (MRAP) in 1949 after spending 650 days in the two death camps from 1943 until the end of the war.

Born in Paris in 1922, he became a Communist supporter before his teens, but had a career working in a leather shop cut short when he was forced to flee his home to Lyon in the wake of the Nazi occupation.

Captured by Nazi troops in 1943, he was taken to Auschwitz with his mother and sister, who died during the journey.

In January 1945 he was one of the 12,000 prisoners forced to undergo the death march from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, and one of only 2,500 to survive.

After being liberated in April 1945, he returned to Paris to begin his several decades of work campaigning against all types of racism.

Despite all the horrors he endured, he was able to say: “I had a boundless hatred for Nazism; I had none for the Germans.”

Holocaust Educational Trust chief executive Karen Pollock said that “as a survivor of Auschwitz, Charles Palant was a witness to and victim of humanity at its worst.

“His experiences led to him becoming a life-long campaigner against antisemitism and racism, and his continued commitment to promoting tolerance and acceptance will be his legacy.”