In just under nine hours, the names of more than 8,700 Jews deported from Italy and the former Italian territories between 1938 and 1945 were read aloud at yesterday’s “Day of Memory,” a commemorative event held outside the Italian Culture Institute on Park Avenue.

Thirty-six readers — including a Holocaust survivor, Stella Levi; a first deputy commissioner of the police department, George Grasso; the wife of Governor Cuomo, Matilda Cuomo; the consul general of Israel in New York, Asaf Shariv; the Italian ambassador to the United Nations, Marcello Spatafora, and the general secretary of the United Nations, Srgjan Kerim — took turns reading out the names.

Yesterday’s event was one in a series that ends January 30, sponsored by the Consulate General of Italy, the Italian Cultural Institute, and the Centro Primo Levi, to commemorate January 27, 1945, the day in which the Soviet Army entered and liberated Auschwitz.

Braving the cold, participants rotated through a lineup of three microphones set up on the sidewalk outside the institute and read from a list of names in five-minute intervals.

“Every name is a wall falling and it causes shame and pain. Everyone should go to Auschwitz. It changes your life. Our generation must give the tools to remember because soon all the survivors will have passed away,” the director of the institute, Renato Miracco, said.

The director of the Centro Primo Levi, Natalia Indrimi, said the decision to hold the event outside was simple.

“The Shoah interrupted history, and this is one of the busiest streets in New York, so we wanted to try and interrupt the city,” she said.