News from Poland, Japan and Spain

POLAND – Thousands of youth remember Holocaust at Auschwitz

WARSAW | Thousands of youth from Israel, the United States and other countries marched Thursday between Auschwitz and Birkenau, the two parts of Nazi Germany’s most notorious death complex, to honor the millions killed in the Holocaust.

Also Thursday, Polish officials and members of the Jewish community gathered in Warsaw to mark the 69th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the doomed revolt that a group of Jews waged against the Nazis in 1943.

An estimated 10,000 young people, some carrying Israeli flags or wearing them draped around their shoulders, took part in the March of the Living in Oswiecim, a town in southern Poland where the Germans operated Auschwitz during World War II.

The event, which takes place every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, involves a walk of two miles from Auschwitz to Birkenau, where Hitler’s men executed Jews, Roma and others in huge numbers in gas chambers.

The participants were joined by a handful of Holocaust survivors and American military veterans who helped liberate several other death camps at the end of World War II.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet troops in January 1945, in the closing months of the war as Germany faced defeat.

 

JAPAN – Japan’s newest tower uses anti-quake technology

The Skytree is expected to bolster television and radio transmissions in the capital region. Owners hope it will also become a new tourist destination in Tokyo.

 

SPAIN – Women visit town to ease bride shortage

CANDELEDA | Inspired by a Hollywood western, a Spanish dating association is trying to slow a population drain from the country’s beleaguered central villages, introducing bachelors to women bussed in from the big city of Madrid with hopes of ending a bride shortage.

Candeleda, a town of 6,000 on the banks of the picturesque Lobera River, hosted a weekend fiesta to welcome 68 women for a meet-and-greet with the village’s single men. Ancient cave paintings show Candeleda has been inhabited for some 5,000 years, and resident Jose Miguel, 67, said he would hate to see its population dwindle after such a long history.

“I’ve checked out the few widows and single women here,” said Miguel. “I signed up for this to meet new ladies and to hopefully show them the beauty of my town.”

The group, Asocamu, was set up in 1995 to promote rural re-population by organizing parties for single men and woman, but Spain’s painful financial crisis and the lure of city jobs has made the need more pressing than ever, Manuel Gozalo, one of the organizers, said Sunday.

Many villages are falling into ruin, with national statistics showing that of Spain’s 5,000 villages up to 100 are under imminent threat of abandonment.

Large swathes of central and northern Spain are at risk of depopulation. In the small agricultural communities of Spain’s central plain single, male residents were finding the loneliness too tough to endure, Gozalo said.

Asocamu credits as its inspiration the 1951 film “Westward the Women,” starring Robert Taylor and Denise Darcel, which tells the story of how the American west was populated by organizing wagon trains of women to provide company, and brides, for lonely pioneers.

Blanca Fernandez, 52, works in sales in Madrid and was attracted by the idea of a nice day out and a chance for romance.  “I know it’s difficult to find the love of one’s life, but some of these meetings have led to marriages,” she said.

(The news briefs above are from wire reports and staff reports posted at YahooNews.com on April 19th, BostonHerald.com on April 17th and ChicagoTribune.com on April 22nd.)