Adolf Hitler's birthplace in Austria is now officially a police station – National

The building where Adolf Hitler was born in the town of Braunau am Inn near the Austrian-German border is now officially a police station, a change overseen by the Austrian government in hopes of preventing neo-Nazis from using it as a tourist destination.

After years of discussion about the fate of the large, traditionally fenced house, which before the renovation was privately owned and the headquarters of an organization caring for the disabled, the Austrian authorities bought the building in 2017 and announced in 2019 that it would be renovated and turned into a police station.

Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in a rented apartment in the building and spent the first weeks of his life there before his family moved out and eventually moved to Passau in southern Germany.

Even before it was converted, there were no signs of this building's past. There is a stone on the road from Mauthausen – the infamous Nazi extermination camp – with the words “Never again fascism” engraved on it, but no mention of Hitler by name.

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The rock is always there. The only sign added to its freshly painted white space reads “Police.”

Speaking to the media during a visit to the building, the head of the history department of the Austrian interior ministry, Stephan Mlczoch, said that the purpose of the change in the program “is to prevent any association with Adolf Hitler, to deprive him of that anonymity,” reported Reuters.

Under the Nazi regime, the “Führer's birthplace” was an art museum, Mlczoch added, which was part of the fascist ruling party's attempt to instill a religious policy of human propaganda, designed to portray Hitler as an all-knowing savior.

“Today's police, our Austrian federal police, are completely different from the symbols that are tied to this place. Our police represent democracy and the rule of law,” said Interior Minister Gerhard Karner speaking at the opening ceremony, according to Reuters..

Local officials told the agency that there are now only “isolated” incidents involving tourists, and that the number has decreased over time. It did not elaborate on what kind of “incidents” occurred.

Performing the Hitler salute or displaying symbols associated with the Nazi party is illegal in Austria under the Prohibition Act and is punishable by law.

Asked about the community's reaction to the project, Mayor Johannes Waidbacher told Reuters: “I think the people of Braunau have accepted it and can live with it.”

“I think it is not a bad way, but whether it works as we all hope and expect, we will have to wait and see,” he added.

Austria's largest Holocaust survivor group, the Mauthausen Committee, opposed the renovation, saying the police station was inappropriate and that more should be done to recognize Hitler's crimes.

“Every year at the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial there is a ceremony that says: don't do it again.

Hitler's Nazi regime killed an estimated six million Jews and other minority groups during the Holocaust, including gays, Roma and disabled people, as well as Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses and Soviet and Polish prisoners of war.

His invasion of Poland in 1939 started the Second World War, in which at least 60 million people died. He died by suicide in April 1945, months before the end of the war.

— via files from Reuters and the Associated Press

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