German city to house asylum seekers in former KZ barracks ?

[Tender Branson]

As you may know, Germany (and we) and Sweden etc. are currently swamped with asylum seekers from Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan/Eritrea etc. and finding adequate housing is increasingly a problem.

Nobody really wants tent cities, setting up containers would be costly and the extreme left-wingers of course only want to import the asylum seekers, but their solidarity usually ends at the border. But when they have entered the country, only a few of extreme left-wingers let them live in their own house.

But is putting them into former KZ barracks really the right thing to do ? Pretty insensitive if you ask me.

There needs to be increasing pressure on the lazy Eastern European (and some Western) countries, which do virtually nothing to house asylum seekers.

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/kz-aussenstelle-soll-in-schwerte-fluechtlingsheim-werden-a-1012577.html

[palandio]

There were hundreds or thousands of these KZ outposts, hundreds of thousands of (usually sub-standard) barracks were built to accomodate forced laborers and slave laborers. Many of these buildings were used after the war to accomodate displaced persons, refugees, expellees and invalids. Most have been torn down since then, but many (often communal property) have been used even later, e.g. for social housing.
Is there a difference between using these baracks as a kindergarden, as a youth club, for social housing or for the accomodation of asylum seekers? Many people, many of them of foreign origin, have lived in social housing that was originally built for forced laborers (or later for expellees). Are they different from asylum seekers?
Maybe it would be the best option to tear all these barracks down, because most of them are of poor quality anyway. Actually this happens quite frequently in regions like Southern Bavaria where building plots are rare.

[Heimdal]

There needs to be increasing pressure on the lazy Eastern European (and some Western) countries, which do virtually nothing to house asylum seekers.

Another option is for countries like Germany and Sweden to limit the amount of asylum seekers, so that they can actually provide housing for the people that they receive.

[MaxQue]

There needs to be increasing pressure on the lazy Eastern European (and some Western) countries, which do virtually nothing to house asylum seekers.

Another option is for countries like Germany and Sweden to limit the amount of asylum seekers, so that they can actually provide housing for the people that they receive.

Well, not everyone is Danish (do I need to restate their reputation as the Western country doing the less for immigrants?).

[Cubby]

What city is this in? When I copy the Spiegel article into Google Translate, it keeps saying "Sword City" (Schwerte).

It might be in the Ruhr valley "Stadtrand der Ruhrgebietskommune Schwerte", but it also says its near Buchenwald, which appears to be on the other side of the country near Weimar. I'm very confused!

[Tender Branson]

What city is this in? When I copy the Spiegel article into Google Translate, it keeps saying "Sword City" (Schwerte).

It might be in the Ruhr valley "Stadtrand der Ruhrgebietskommune Schwerte", but it also says its near Buchenwald, which appears to be on the other side of the country near Weimar. I'm very confused!

There is only 1 city called "Schwerte":

Schwerte is a city of 50.000 people, just outside Dortmund in the Ruhrgebiet.

The name comes from "Schwert", which means "sword".

Google Translate is wrong though when it comes to Buchenwald: There is no city named "Schwerte" near Buchenwald. The article only mentions that Schwerte once had/served as an outpost of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

[Cubby]

There is only 1 city called "Schwerte":

Schwerte is a city of 50.000 people, just outside Dortmund in the Ruhrgebiet.

The name comes from "Schwert", which means "sword".

Google Translate is wrong though when it comes to Buchenwald: There is no city named "Schwerte" near Buchenwald. The article only mentions that Schwerte once had/served as an outpost of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

That was my mistake, I didn't know what they meant by an outpost.
 
It's strange, when I look up the city of Schwerte now, it comes up right away. But the other day when I tried to find it I was getting all this stuff about Hanseatic League cities.