The German government has selected former SS Barracks at the Buchenwald concentration camp to house asylum seekers:

Plans to house asylum seekers in a former SS barracks at a Nazi concentration camp are causing controversy in Germany.

Local authorities in the city of Schwerte, in western Germany, want to house 21 asylum seekers in a Nazi-era barracks believed to have been used by SS guards at a local outpost of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp.

Germany is facing an acute shortage of accommodation for asylum-seekers while their claims are assessed. A huge influx of refugees, many of them fleeing the violence in Syria and Iraq, has left official shelters overcrowded and forced local authorities to improvise alternatives.

But the Schwerte authorities have been accused of bad taste over their decision to use a former SS barracks building to make up the shortfall.

“This is not a normal place, not just anywhere, but a place of exploitation, oppression and unbounded violence,” Christine Glauning, director of the Documentation Centre for Nazi Forced Labour, told Spiegel magazine’s website.

Seriously?