On Yom Hashoah, Yossi Sucary watched with pride as two Libyan Holocaust survivors joined the ceremony at the Israeli presidential complex. It was a marked change from his childhood, when teachers would tell him he'd "made up" his Benghazi-born mother's experiences at the hands of the Nazis.

"I told my teacher that my mother and grandmother had told me their horrible stories about the Nazis in Libya," recalls Sucary, an Israeli author, academic and board member of the social justice organisation, the New Israel Fund. "She said "you're mistaken. Only the European Jews were in the Holocaust.' "

In Israel, the Holocaust is almost always front of mind. Yet for decades, explains Sucary, whose novel Benghazi - Bergen-Belsen has just been published on Amazon, almost nothing was said publicly about the experiences of the Jews of Benghazi, Tripoli and beyond after the Nazis occupied Libya in 1942.

"They suffered from the Holocaust in the most brutal way, like their brothers in Europe, but people didn't know about it in Israel," says Sucary, shaking his head. "We call it the unspoken Holocaust."

Even now, the story of the Libyan Jews during the Holocaust remains in the shadows. What's known is that after seizing the country, the Nazis created at least three concentration camps: Jado, Gharyan and Said al Aziz, where many died from disease or starvation alongside Nazi brutality. Jews were also transferred through Italy to Belsen and Birenbach Reiss. Many of the latter group, Sucary's grandparents included, were upper class Libyans who, by virtue of having worked in Egypt, held British passports. "The Nazis planned to make prisoner substitutions," he explains.

Unlike in Europe, the Nazis did not keep meticulous records and the number of victims is the subject of ongoing debate. Sucary puts it in the thousands, but is clear that "every one of the 50,000 Libyan Jews suffered one way or another from the Nazi occupation… every family suffered from someone who was killed, wounded or collapsed."

After liberation, survivors were sent back to Libya. Vast numbers of Libyan Jews joined other Mizrachi communities and emigrated to Israel, where Sucary was born in 1959. Growing up hearing his mother wake from nightmares in which she would cry "the Nazis are coming", in Arabic and Italian, Sucary always knew this story needed to be told.

When his novel was published in Israel in 2014, it won critical praise - Sucary received the prestigious Brenner Prize for Hebrew Literature -- and sent shockwaves around the intelligentsia, most of whom knew nothing about what had happened. A few historians had written about it, he says, but people didn't pay attention. "Literature can encourage history to speak and that's what happened. Now everybody knows about this story."

The novel tells of Silvana, a young woman who watches her community crumble and displays leadership in the face of this crisis. It is not his mother's story - she was just 10 when the Nazis arrived - but is inspired by it. Sucary's family were wealthy - his grandfather a successful merchant importing building material from Italy to North Africa – and had flourished in then-cosmopolitan Benghazi. "They lived a very good life and had relatively good relationships with the Arabs."

While they survived, his mother's eight-year-old cousin was shot at close range, and other relatives perished. Beyond the atrocities, Sucary is struck by how those taken to German concentration camps survived against the odds; speaking Arabic not Yiddish, used to warmer climates.

"Think about the difference in the weather," he says. "They came from the Sahara - they didn't even know what snow was."

Sucary's book is now on the Israeli education curriculum; he is hopeful future generations will know what happened to Libya's Jews. But why did it take 70 years?

"Ignorance combined, I'm sorry to say, with a bit of racism,' he says. "Ashkenazi Israelis related to people from north Africa as people from an inferior culture."

The discrimination experienced by Mizrachi communities after independence, in areas such as housing or education, is no secret in Israel. Even now, says Sucary, the contrasts with the Ashkenazim are stark and origins still define people's paths; he points to poor representation of Mizrachim in politics, on the Supreme Court, in academia and in the media. "There is progress, mainly in the arts, but not in the places that control the country,' he says. "Not in the places that establish the future of Israel."

But the father of four Ashkenazi children has little time for those who wish to complain about the past. His focus is on the future, and working with NIF and other organisations to invest in education and opportunities for Israel's marginalised groups. NIF projects include working to challenge discrimination against Mizrachim in the Charedi education system, and ensuring Mizrachim get a better deal in terms of municipal housing.

"Education is the key word," says Sucary. "We have to support communities that have been left behind. There are people who are so talented but they don't have the opportunities that people in the centre of Israel have."

Now, he says, Israeli society is "ill". "We have to create a society that is based on social justice for all segments, Jewish, Mizrachi Jews, Israeli Arabs, Ethiopians. It's in all of our interests. You cannot fight for one repressed segment and neglect the other. If you want to fix the Mizrachi situation you must support the situation of women, the gay community, and of course the Arabs."

The alienation felt by the Mizrachi Israelis, he contends, is one reason they back right-wing parties even when it's against their economic interests. "For them the establishment is the left", as it was in the early years of Israel. He suggests the right also better understands the religious traditionalism of the community. "It's not just about financial interests, it's about identity. The left only bring universal values."

He draws a similarity between Israeli voting patterns and the EU referendum, saying he was not surprised by the result. "It was like revenge from the poor people. They didn't feel the benefits of economic prosperity. It didn't trickle down," he posits. "It's like with the Palestinians, if they don't enjoy from the fruits of peace they will not support the peace process. If people feel the country is taking care of them and they are given the same opportunities, I believe peace will be established."

He is hopeful about the chances of peace – "only 70 years ago the British and German were in an awful war, now there is peace, there can be in the Middle East as well" – and would like to see Mizrachim in the negotiations. "I am absolutely sure that if Israel's leadership consisted of more Mizrachim we would have more chance of peace, because we are the same, Mizrachim and Arabs."

Despite this optimism, he holds no hope of going to Libya and seeing the family home. "I would love to," he says simply. "It's one of my dreams. But I cannot go."

Instead, his mission is to right an historic injustice and share the story of the Libyan Jews. "The Mizrachi community sees this book as fixing the telling of the history, he says. "I want everybody in the world to know that Jews from North Africa suffered from the Nazis as well."