BERLIN — A town in western Germany is being criticized for a plan to house asylum-seekers on a site where slave-laborers from a Nazi concentration camp were once held.

The town of Schwerte intends to house 21 refugees in a building built after the war, in the 1950s, on the site where slave laborers from the Buchenwald concentration camp were held as they were forced to repair trains during the war.

All original slave labor buildings at the site have been demolished. Still, Buchenwald memorial deputy-director Rikola-Gunnar Luettgenau told the dpa news agency Friday that housing refugees there hardly seems welcoming.

Mayor Heinrich Boeckeluehr says the plan makes sense.

The building has previously been used by artists and for other asylum-seekers.