Italians celebrated the Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday with a series of events and ceremonies commemorating the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.

In a parliamentary speech, Premier Silvio Berlusconi underlined society's "duty" to remember the horrors of the Holocaust.

"All public institutions, especially the ones responsible for educating our children, have a duty to remember the Nazis' crimes so that they may never happen again," he said.

Addressing Italian students, who regularly visit the Holocaust museums and concentration camps on state-sponsored school trips, Berlusconi said he understood the "shock and rebellion" those visits stirred, adding that "it's our job as governors to turn those feelings into a positive force for building a modern, democratic society where we can all live together in peace."

The premier thus called for a moment of deep reflection. "We have to take this opportunity to look at our globalized society, at the situations of discrimination and deficits in democracy today and stop them from advancing any further."

Berlusconi's address to a packed house of MPs, diplomats and Holocaust survivors was followed by a speech by Nobel peace laureate and former Auschwitz detainee Elie Wiesel.

At the presidential palace head of state Giorgio Napolitano gave out over 80 honor medals to a delegation of Holocaust survivors and people who had helped the Jews escape from deportation and death, underlining that "the Holocaust was a tragic experience and still charged with meaning for us today."

Despite the general feeling of solemnity, a few minor acts of vandalism served as a reminder that anti-Semitism has not been totally eradicated in Italy.

On Tuesday night a highway in Rome was covered with spray painted swastikas, Celtic crosses and anti-Jewish slogans. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini warned that it would be a mistake to underestimate the extent of anti-Semitism in Italian society, pointing at a recent study estimating that over 44 percent of Italians ambivalently feel towards Jews.

During the World War II more than 7,000 Italian Jews were deported and killed in the Nazi camps.