Ernest Levy (Lowy) was born in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1925. He and his family were expelled by local fascists to Hungary in 1938 and he lived in Budapest until 1944. He survived seven concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Belsen, but lost much of his family in the Holocaust. He and surviving family members settled in Budapest after the war. Following his brother Karl (Charles Lowy), who had become cantor of Queens Park Synagogue in 1948, Ernest came to Glasgow in 1961 and became cantor of Pollokshields Syngagogue, then Giffnock Synagogue 1965-2000. He married fellow-survivor Kathy Herman, a widow with a young child who had left Hungary in 1956.