Rishi Sunak speaks to Leeds-based Holocaust survivor

Arek Hersh, from Leeds, was just a boy when the Nazis invaded Poland.

During the next 5 years, he lost nearly all his family in the Holocaust. Arek survived, and later settled in Britain.

In a video released by Downing Street, Mr Hersh and his wife Jean and daughter Michelle spoke to Mr Sunak about the time he spent in Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp in Poland.

“B7608. That was my name and that was my number. Anytime they wanted me they called me by the number.”

Showing Mr Sunak the number which was tattooed on his arm, he said: “Everybody in Auschwitz had a number, [which people] kept for life.

“11 years old, my whole family was killed, everybody. Mother, father, brothers, sisters, never seen again,” he said as the Prime Minister was told that he lost 84 members of his family.

Mr Hersh explained that while prisoners were being transported from one camp, they were forced to pick grass to boil and eat for food.

His wife told Mr Sunak that he at one point was driven to try to eat his own shoes.

“Hunger is a dreadful thing,” he said.

Asked by Mr Sunak what he tells young people about his ordeal, Mr Hersh said: “I tell them my story, and then I say to them at the end, to be good, to respect people.”

“It doesn’t matter what the colour of your skin is, we’re all human beings, we’re all entitled to live on this earth in peace and quiet” his wife added.

The King and Queen Consort lit candles at Buckingham Palace to remember those who suffered “such horrors” to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

On Friday morning, Charles and Camilla met with Dr Martin Stern who was taken to Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War as a young boy.

After doing so, the King said: “I hope this will be one way of trying to remember all those poor people who had to suffer such horrors for so many years- and still do.”