BERLIN, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) -- German political and religious leaders marked a national day commemorating the victims of the Nazi dictatorship with minutes of silence and the laying of wreaths at events across the country on Sunday.

    In Berlin, German President Horst Koehler attended a lecture in the Jewish Museum.

    Earlier on Saturday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Germans faced "a calling and a duty" never to allow anything like the Nazi period to occur again.

    On Friday, the German parliament marked the commemoration with a minute of silence.

    In reference to the persecution of the Jews in the Holocaust, Bundestag President Norbert Lammert said it was "shaming" that Jewish institutions still had to receive special police protection.

    Speaking in Dachau, the site of one of the Nazi concentration camps, Evangelical Bishop Wolfgang Huber said the memory of 1933-1945 Hitler dictatorship had to be kept alive, according to German news agency DPA.

    Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of German Jews, warned against the rise of right-wing extremism in Germany at an event in Magdeburg.

    The national day of commemoration for the victims of the Nazi terror is held on Jan. 27 every year, the date that the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by Soviet troops.

    Germany nominated Jan. 27 as a national day of commemoration in1996. The United Nations General Assembly named the date International Holocaust Remembrance Day in November 2005.