Austria repurposes Hitler birthplace to deter extremists

The house where Adolf Hitler was born in the Austrian town of Braunau am Inn is set to reopen on Wednesday, July 22, as a police station following several years of renovation, authorities said, in a move aimed at preventing the site from attracting neo-Nazis.

The project, located near the border with Bavaria, cost approximately €20 million ($22.8 million), dpa reports.

Under the redevelopment plan, the complex — comprising the main building, outbuildings and a courtyard — will house officers from the district police command and the local police inspectorate.

The property, where Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, had long been privately owned. In 2017, Austrian authorities expropriated the building after a protracted legal dispute. An expert commission subsequently rejected proposals to demolish the structure or convert it into a museum, instead recommending a redesign intended to make the building as unrecognisable as possible.

The site had repeatedly drawn far-right extremists in the past. Officials have said that repurposing it as a police facility offers an additional security benefit, allowing law enforcement to monitor and check suspicious individuals on site.

Hitler was responsible for launching World War II, which resulted in the deaths of at least 60 million people. During the Holocaust, around 6 million Jewish men and women were murdered.

By Tamilla Hasanova