Adolf Hitler’s birthplace has reopened as a police station to stop the site being “worshipped”.Austrian police officers moved into the property in Braunau am Inn on Wednesday after a £17million refurbishment.Authorities have insisted the method is the most effective way of “neutralising” the building and keep Hitler’s sympathisers away.”The future use of the house by the police should send an unmistakable signal that the role of this building as a memorial to the Nazis been permanently revoked,” Wolfgang Peschorn, the Interior Minister of Austria, said in a statement.The renovation of Hitler’s birthplace on the German border has taken three years, with brand-new windows and a new, white exterior.It now bears no hallmarks of the Nazi leader’s birth, save a memorial stone which reads: “For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again fascism. The millions who died serve as a warning.”Before the transformation work, the building served as a makeshift museum, school and library.Thomas Stelzer, the region’s governor, said in a statement: “The new police centre in Braunau is a place of security and the rule of law.Austria has turned Adolf Hitler’s birthplace into a police station | REUTERS”It is precisely here that we show that we do not merely preserve responsibility from history, but actively live it.”The building, which Hitler lived in for the first few weeks of his life, had regular visitors, especially on the Nazi’s birthday – although the frequency of visits has dwindled in recent years.It was bought by the Austrian Government in 2017, with a court insisting at the time that “the only way to make sure that there is no symbolic misuse is to seize it”.Authorities announced it would become a police station in 2019 to further discourage any Nazi get-togethers.
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The building now bears no marks of Nazism other than a memorial stone | REUTERSBut some remain skeptical of the building’s transformation.Annette Pommer, 34, a descendant of the site’s original owner, told The New York Times: “In a dictatorship, the police is an instrument.”When you are in a dictatorship, the police is not for democracy.”Also opposing the idea is the Mauthausen Committee, Austria’s main Holocaust survivors’ group, arguing a police station is an inappropriate use and more should be done to draw attention to Hitler’s atrocitities.The building underwent a three-year £17million renovation | REUTERS”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.Others, such as local historian Florian Kotanko, are in favour of the change, acknowledging the police presence was likely to dissuade any Nazi sympathisers from visiting the site.”Nobody will dare to go close to the house or the other side of the street to lift his right arm,” Mr Kotanko said.”It’s great and a good idea,” estate agent Thomas Spreitz told Reuters. “Every now and then there are [neo-Nazi] groups there, and now that’s history.”