Hitler birthplace opens as police station

The house where Adolf Hitler was born near Austria's border with Germany officially opens as a police station on Wednesday. Austria's authorities hope this change will stop it from becoming a site of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis.

After prolonged debate over the large traditional terraced house in Braunau am Inn, previously owned privately and used by a charity supporting people with disabilities, Austria acquired it compulsorily in 2017. Officials announced in 2019 plans to remodel the property into a police station.

Prior to the conversion, the sole marker of its past was a rock from the Mauthausen concentration camp placed on the pavement bearing the words "Never again fascism," without naming Hitler. That rock stays in position. The only new addition to the white facade is a sign reading "Police."

"The goal was to avoid any link to Adolf Hitler and remove its mystique," said Stephan Mlczoch, head of the Austrian interior ministry's history department, during a press tour of the building.

Former art museum

The Nazis promoted that mystique through their cult of personality around Hitler. During his rule the "Fuehrer birth house" functioned as an art museum. Hitler resided there only briefly in 1889 before his family departed, Mlczoch noted.

Passers-by frequently pause for photographs, though their opinions on Hitler remain unclear. Local officials report only isolated incidents involving visitors, a decline from earlier years.

While details were not provided, the Hitler salute and other Nazi symbols remain prohibited in Austria.

Regarding public reaction to the project, Mayor Johannes Waidbacher told Reuters: "I think on the whole the people of Braunau have accepted it and can live with it."

Waidbacher served on a commission that advised using the building for either charitable or official administrative purposes. Ultimately, a charity presence would have left it too open to the public, he explained.

"I think it is not a bad approach, but whether it works as we all hope and expect, we will have to wait and see," he said.

Never forget, or let's forget?

Some opposition has emerged, including from the Mauthausen Committee, Austria's leading Holocaust survivors' group. It contends that a police station is unsuitable and that greater efforts should highlight Hitler's crimes.

"Every year at the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial there is a ceremony saying: never again. And in Braunau they are saying: let's forget as soon as possible," said Robert Eiter of the Mauthausen Committee and the Network Against Racism and Right-Wing Extremism.

For decades Austria maintained it was the first victim of National Socialism after its annexation by Hitler's Germany in 1938. It now acknowledges Austrians were also perpetrators, though it rarely expands on that point.

"The world will not forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born. Wikipedia will not change its entries," Eiter said, warning there will be no drop in neo-Nazis making "the pilgrimage to Braunau."

Some local residents expressed doubts about the conversion.

"I would have preferred if they had done something else, but it is what it is," said Irene, 74, noting she would have liked the charity to remain.