The infamous former Nazi Concentration Camp Buchenwald is being used to accommodate refugees seeking asylum in Germany according to media reports.
The reports say 21 men are living in the barracks at the former death camp which are equipped with bunk beds and basic cooking facilities, while waiting for their asylum applications which will give them official refugee status, to be processed.
Apparently some of the refugees have been there for several months, while others are from the recent influx of refugees that have entered German.
From the time it was opened in 1937, to the end of World War 2 in 1945, 250,000 prisoners were held at Buchenwald with 56,000 of them killed. These included 11,000 jews with the rest being made up of what the Nazi’s at the time termed “asocial” – political prisoners, gypsies, Soviet prisoners, Gays, and the mentally ill.
Since news of Buchenwald housing refugees first came to light, the move has been heavily criticised but local government officials have said the move was necessary.
Christian Hanke the mayor of Berlin’s Mitte district said the situation was an emergency measure “but it is unavoidable. There is a lot of room in the hangars”
The media news of Buchenwald now being used a refugee camp, emerged as Germany and other European countries struggle to handle the recording- breaking numbers of refugees who have been flooding there over the last few weeks.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that 40,000 new “migrants” were expected to arrive in Germany over the weekend, double the number that arrived last weekend when officials in Bavaria warned they were just coping with the sudden human influx.
Since the beginning of the year 450,000 refugees have entered Germany, escaping persecution, war, and poverty in the middle east and Africa.
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