German town plans to house refugees in former Nazi camp

Refugee organizations in Schwerte, Germany, are upset over the town's plan to house asylum-seekers in the barracks of what was once a satellite post of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

The proposed housing unit is on the site of a railway repair workshop where 700 people lived as forced laborers during World War II, the BBC reports. Local authorities want to house 20 asylum-seekers there; a spokesman told Der Spiegel that during the war, laborers never slept in the building, and since then it has been used as a kindergarten, storage site, and home for wounded veterans.

Germany receives the most asylum seekers in the EU, with about 200,000 applications in 2014. Tension is growing in certain cities, including Dresden, where German media reports that a hotel owner had to withdraw from a deal to house 90 refugees following threats on social media.

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