Few prisoners survived a Nazi concentration camp; Ernest Levy survived not just one camp but seven, and was to become one of Scotland’s most respected and much loved religious leaders.

Levy was born into an Orthodox Jewish family (his father was Hungarian, his mother Dutch) in 1925 in Bratislava, a city whose turmoil at that time reflected the disruptive legacy of the First World War. The city, formerly Pressburg, was incorporated by force into the new Czechoslovakia in 1919; by the end of the 1920s the former Hungarian/German majority had become a minority. The subsequent rise of Slovak fascism in the 1930s had a catastrophic effect on the Jewish population; in 1938 the young Levy and his family, along with hundreds of other Jewish families, were sent to a camp on the Hungarian border where Levy’s family, thanks to his father’s Hungarian nationality, was allowed to cross the border to settle in Hungary.

Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, and the 19-year-old Levy, by then an engineering student, was deported to Auschwitz along with thousands of others. He described the Auschwitz sign as marking the entrance to “a world of evilness beyond description . . . We poured out like a sack of potatoes, one on top of another. The reality was that we had arrived in Hell. There you ceased to be a person, you were reduced to a number, totally dehumanised. The stench was lying on your chest and tore your lungs apart.” Levy became a slave worker in seven Nazi camps, the last of which was Belsen in January 1945. Belsen was liberated by British troops in April 1945. His father, and also a brother and a sister, had died in the camps.

Levy was repatriated to Bratislava and later moved to Budapest where he worked as an engineer and sang at the Dohany Synagogue (the largest in Europe). In 1960 Levy, now a fully trained cantor, left Hungary for further cantorial studies in Tel Aviv, and in 1961 decided to move to Glasgow, at the bidding of a brother and sister who had settled there.

Levy described his arrival in Glasgow in his 1998 memoirs, Just One More Dance, thus: “In a moment, when I saw Glasgow with its grey, low-flying clouds, I thought I had made a mistake. But as we drove into Giffnock suburb I fell in love with the entire area . . . something here had clicked, I liked the people and the city . . . For the first time it looked as though I had a good and secure future ahead of me. I had found a ‘home’ and settled in Scotland for good.”

He became cantor of the Pollokshields synagogue and in 1965 married another survivor of Belsen, Kathy Herman. He always believed that he had seen Kathy during the last terrible days at Belsen. In that year he also became cantor of Scotland’s largest synagogue, Giffnock and Newlands.

Levy wrote two memoirs: Just One More Dance and The Single Light (2007), the latter book being launched at the Scottish Parliament (“I have never felt so Scottish,” he said). Like many teachers in other religious traditions, Levy often stressed the importance and significance of light. In one camp incident he picked up a sardine can contemptuously discarded by a guard. He retrieved the can and used what little oil remained to produce some light for the festival of Chanukkah. His friend Dr Kenneth Collins said of him: ‘‘He used to say that even in the midst of terrible darkness, it was always possible to find a light of humanity that would shine out.”

Like all great religious teachers, Levy wrestled with the problem of God and human suffering. He said: “When people ask me where God was in Belsen, I say He was there down in the dust with me. As the psalmists say ‘I am one with you in trouble’. People ask me, ‘What then is God?’. My reply is ‘God is part of us. He is the imperceptible in our existence, the spiritual dimension in us, expressing Himself through our minds’.”

Levy also eloquently lauded diversity as a social strength: “Each person must be part of society, without giving up his identity, values and traditions. And each person must recognise the validity of each other’s beliefs and religions.

“There is a fundamental human right to be as different from each other as we please, each human being is unique. Instead of seeking conformity we must turn the whole thing upside down and recognise that differences can be wonderful in adding colour and spice to our lives.”

Levy was appointed OBE in 2002. His wife, Kathy, predeceased him in 2007. He is survived by a son and daughter.

The Rev Ernest Levy, OBE, was born on January 13, 1925. He died on August 22, 2009, aged 84