Rome, January 27 - Italian President Sergio Mattarella said on Holocaust Remembrance Day Wednesday that the Auschwitz extermination camp was a reminder of the horrors men are capable of, 71 years after its liberation. The camp, in Nazi-occupied Poland, was liberated by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945. At least 1.1 million prisoners are estimated to have died there, including many Italians, and events are being held across the country to keep the memory of the mass murder alive. "Auschwitz, with its barbed wire, gas chambers, huts and ovens does not leave us. On the contrary, it asks us constantly, it forces us every time to return to the edge of the abyss and stare down into it, with our eyes and minds full of pain and moral revulsion," President Mattarella said during a commemorative ceremony at the Quirinale palace. He stressed the importance of realising that even today, hatred and fanaticism cause innocent deaths around the world, and he warned against the dangers of "other deadly types of racism, discrimination and intolerance". Italian Premier Matteo Renzi tweeted his memory of visiting Auschwitz with Holocaust survivor Nedo Fiano, adding the words "never again". The President of the Union of Italian Jewish communities Renzo Gattegna said the remembrance day was a chance to honour victims and to shun any theory of inequality between people that can lead to oppression and slavery.