The building where Adolf Hitler was born in Austria officially reopened as a police station on Wednesday, as authorities seek to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi pilgrimage site.
The historic terraced house in Braunau am Inn was privately owned and previously housed a charity for people with disabilities, was the subject of years of controversy. Austria compulsorily purchased the property in 2017, and in 2019 it announced that it would be renovated and transformed into a police station.
Before the conversion, the only marker acknowledging the building's history was a memorial stone from the Mauthausen concentration camp inscribed with the words "Never Again Fascism." The stone remains outside, while the building's white facade now bears only a "Police" sign.
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Speaking during a media tour of the building, Stephan Mlczoch, chief of the Austrian interior ministry's historical department, told reporters, "The aim was to prevent any association with Adolf Hitler, to strip it of that mystique."
The Nazis' cult of personality surrounding Hitler, whose reign saw the "Fuehrer birth house" transformed into an art museum, fostered this mystique. Hitler was born there in April 1889, but his family moved away just weeks later, according to Mlczoch.
Visitors still stop to photograph the building, although officials say it is impossible to know their motives. Local authorities added that incidents involving suspected neo-Nazi visitors have become rare.
The Hitler salute and other Nazi symbols are prohibited in Austria, although they did not go into detail.
When asked how the public has received 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 suggested the building be used for official administrative or philanthropic purposes. He claimed that putting a charity there would have ultimately made it too accessible to the general population.
"I think it isn't a bad approach, but whether it works as we all hope and expect, we'll have to wait and see," he said.
The primary Holocaust survivors' organisation in Austria, the Mauthausen Committee, has voiced concern, arguing that more should be done to raise awareness of Hitler's crimes and that a police station is unsuitable.
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"Every year at the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial there's a ceremony to say: never again. And in Braunau they're saying: let's forget as soon as possible," said Robert Eiter of the Mauthausen Committee and the Network Against Racism and Right-Wing Extremism.
After being conquered by Hitler's Germany in 1938, Austria claimed for decades that it was the first victim of National Socialism. Austria has since acknowledged that many Austrians participated in Nazi crimes, moving away from its earlier post-war narrative that portrayed the country solely as Hitler's first victim.
"The world won't forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born. Wikipedia won't change its entries," Eiter said, adding there will be no reduction in the number of neo-Nazis making "the pilgrimage to Braunau".
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