‘Stripped of mystique’: Hitler’s birthplace reopens as police station to deter neo-Nazi pilgrims | World News

The building Adolf Hitler was born in has been converted into a police station, in a bid by the Austrian government to prevent it becoming a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis.

The government compulsorily acquired the traditional terraced house in the town of Braunau am Inn near the German border in 2017, following years of debate about what to do with the site.

The building was reopened on Wednesday as a police station, with no signage indicating its connection to the man who led the Nazis to power and orchestrated the Holocaust.

The only indication of its historical significance is a rock on the pavement from the Mauthausen concentration camp with the inscription “Never again fascism”.

“The aim was to prevent any association with Adolf Hitler, so as to strip it of that mystique,” the head of the Austrian interior ministry’s history department, Stephan Mlczoch, told reporters on a tour of the building.

Interest in the building was encouraged under the Nazis’ rule, with the “Fuehrer birth house” becoming an art museum.

Hitler only lived there for a few weeks in 1889 before his family moved out, Mr Mlczoch said.

He went on to lead the National Socialists to control Germany, before annexing Austria and invading much of Europe, leading to the outbreak of WWII and the murder of millions of people in the Holocaust.

Mayor Johannes Waidbacher, who was on a commission that recommended the building be used for charitable or administrative purposes, said: “I think on the whole the people of Braunau have accepted it ‌and can live with it.”

In the end it was decided that a charity would allow too much access from the public.

“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 plan for the site has drawn criticism from those who argue that more should be done to draw attention to Hitler’s atrocities, including the Mauthausen Committee, Austria’s main Holocaust survivors’ group.

Robert Eiter, who is a member of the committee and the Network Against Racism and Right Wing Extremism, said the “world won’t forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born”.

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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,” he said.

The site had previously housed a charity for disabled people.

“I would have ​preferred if they had done something else but it is what it is,” said Irene, 74, adding that she wanted the charity to stay there.

But others were supportive, including estate agent Thomas Spreitz.

“It’s great and a ‌good idea,” he said. “Every now ​and then there are [neo-Nazi] groups there, and now that’s history.”

Locals said passers-by would often stop to take pictures, but their views on Hitler are usually not known.

Officials said there had been “isolated incidents” involving visitors over the years.

For decades, Austria argued it was the first victim of National Socialism, having been annexed by Hitler’s Germany in 1938. It now says Austrians were also perpetrators.

The Hitler salute and other Nazi symbols are banned in Austria.