Israeli historian: 'The Holocaust was a taboo'

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently visited the site of the Nazi Death Camp at Auschwitz in Poland to open a new museum designed by experts from Israel's national memorial centre at Yad Vashem.

The Holocaust, in which six million Jews died, remains for most Israelis one of history's defining events.

Every year thousands of Israeli high school students make a kind of pilgrimage to Poland to learn more about it and the country sends many of its army officers there on official tours too.

Israeli historian Tom Segev is the author of several books including The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust which examined what effect the Holocaust had on Israel.

He spoke to BBC News about how attitudes to the Holocaust and its survivors changed in Israel over time.