Austria Refuses To Demolish Hitler’s Home, Hands It Over To Cops Instead

Austria turned Adolf Hitler’s childhood home into a police station Wednesday, hoping to deter pilgrimages from neo-Nazis, reports show.

Read more Blue-State City Just Had Its Local Gun Ban Trashed By Judge

The traditional home, located in Braunau am Inn, has drawn increased controversy since the government purchased the property from a charity for people with disabilities in 2017 and announced in 2019 that the building would be remodeled to house police officers, the CBC reported. (RELATED: High Fashion Recruiter Who Supplied Models To Jeffrey Epstein Found Dead)

“The aim was to prevent any association with Adolf Hitler, so as to strip it of that mystique,” Stephan Mlczoch, head of the Austrian Interior Ministry’s history department, said, according to CBC.

Before the remodeling, which began in 2023, the only indication that the house had ties to such an infamous historical figure was a rock taken from a concentration camp and placed in the pavement with the inscription, “Never again fascism.” The rock is now joined by a white facade reading “Polizei,” CBC reported.

“This house will now become a place of democracy, rule of law, security, freedom and human dignity,” Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said, adding that through this change Austria was taking “responsibility” for the “terrible legacy” of its past and was instead opening “a new chapter” for the country bordering Germany, according to the BBC.

Young Hitler lived in the home for only a few weeks before his family moved to a different property nearby, then left the town altogether after he turned 3 years old. Hitler later returned to Braunau when he was 49 years old after annexing the country to Nazi Germany, the BBC reported.

Read more France Suffers 5,700 Excess Deaths Amid Heatwave, Officials Say

The city’s mayor, Johannes Waidbacher, said a commission assigned to determine the fate of the building narrowed the options to either housing a charity or using it for administrative purposes before deciding that having a charity based there would make the property too accessible to the public, Reuters reported.

“I think on the whole the people of Braunau have accepted it and can live with it,” Waidbacher told Reuters, adding that he believes this “isn’t a bad approach, but whether it works as we all hope and expect, we’ll have to wait and see.”

However, Austria’s largest Holocaust survivors’ group, the Mauthausen Committee, argued that the station is inappropriate, adding that more should be done to remind the public of Hitler’s crimes.

“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,” Robert Eiter of the Mauthausen Committee and the Network Against Racism and Right-Wing Extremism told CBC.

Read more Professor Testifies Against Taxpayer-Funded Smithsonian’s Alleged Anti-America Agenda