"The aim ​was to prevent any association with Adolf Hitler, so as to strip it of that mystique."

"[That mystique was encouraged by the Nazis' cult of personality around Hitler, under whose rule the] Fuehrer birth house [was an art museum. Hitler only lived there for a few weeks in 1889 before his family moved out]."

Stephan, Mlczoch, head, history department, Austrian interior ministry

 

"I think on the whole, the people of Braunau have accepted it and can live ‌with it." 

"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."

Braunau Mayor Johannes Waidbacher 

 

"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." 

"The world won't ⁠forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born. Wikipedia won't change its entries."

"[There will be no reduction in the number of neo-Nazis making] the pilgrimage to Braunau." 

Robert Eiter, Mauthausen Committee/Network Against Racism and Right-Wing Extremism

A new police station will be officially opened in Adolf Hitler's birth house in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on Wednesday. A memorial stone outside reads 'for peace, freedom and democracy, never again fascism, million dead remind.' (Matthias Schrader/The Associated Press)

 

Austria, the country that gave the United Nations one of its successive Secretary Generals, and when it finally became public that he had joined the Hitler Youth during WWII, his reputation plummeted. That didn't stop Austrians from electing him to its presidency in defiance of reports of his Nazi past. Because the United States in its follow-up investigations determined that he might have been involved in war crimes, he was declared persona non grata in the U.S.; an awkward position for a man who from 1972 to 1981 was present in New York, presiding over the United Nations. Nor later in 1986 to 1992 when the president of a purported ally of the U.S. wasn't permitted entry to the United States.

 

Adolf Hitler, born in Austria, led Germany to 'occupy' Austria in the 1938 Anschluss and the Germany army was welcomed with huge Austrian public enthusiastic displays of joy at their annexation. The 17th-century building near the German border where the Fuehrer was born in 1889 has undergone a transformation, at a cost of $32 million refurbishment to turn it into a police station in the town of Braunau Am Inn. The stated purpose was to deter Austria's ascendant far-right from pilgrimages to the Nazi dictator's birthplace.

 

The once-yellow roughcast walls were whitewashed under contract by the Austrian architecture firm Marte. Above the entrance now hangs a police sign. A memorial stone with the inscription: "For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism, Millions of Dead Warn", remains dutifully in its place on the pavement before the renovated building.  

 

Austrian police officers stand in front of the new station. (Matthias Schrader/The Associated Press)

 

 Following Hitler's annexation of Austria, 65,000 Austrian Jews were murdered, 130,000 forced into exile. The far-right political party FPOe founded by former Nazis is currently Austria's most popular political party. The political party has about 37 percent backing by Austrian voters, reveals polling aggregator Europe Elects.

 

The house was owned by the same family from 1912 onward, leased in 1972 to the Austrian state, where it became a centre for disabled people. Its last private owner, Gerlinde Pommer, vetoed any transformation of the house, contesting its expropriation by the state, despite that neo-Nazis frequently flocked to the place where their worshiped hero had been born.

 

Finally, the Supreme Court approved purchase of the 800-square-metre property, three years after a law was passed in 2015 to take control of the dilapidated building. Demolishing the site as an option was out of the question for historians who urged Austria to acknowledge its role in the slaughter of over six million Jews, as well as Roma, gays, the disabled and mentally unfit and political prisoners.

 

Turning the building into a historical memorial risked the likelihood that extremist fascists would continue to visit the site, as to a sacred memorial to the greatness that was the Nazi conquest of Europe. In the end, an commission of experts guided a final decision to make it into a police station insisting the permanent police presence would "clearly show" -- stated the Austrian government -- that no commemoration of Nazism would be acceptable, the site would be "neutralized". 

 

"But that's absurd: humanity will not forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born", charged Robert Eiter, representing an association of escapees from the concentration camp, Mauthausen Committee Austria. 

 

Vehicles are parked outside the building where Adolf Hitler was born, which has been converted into a police station by Austria's government in hopes of preventing it from serving as a place of ‌pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, in Braunau am Inn, Austria, July 16, 2026. REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth