“Former Hitler House in Austria to be Converted into a Police Station for Human Rights Training”

In the future, training in the field of human rights will be given to police officers in the birthplace of Adolf Hitler in the Austrian municipality of Braunau am Inn. The building will be converted into a police station in the fall, report Austrian media.

The destination of the building has been a matter of debate for years. The house was empty after the Lebenshilfe social workplace left in 2011. Because the owner did not want to participate in the future plans for the building, the house was expropriated in 2016. This was to prevent it from becoming a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis.

That same year, a committee voted in favor of a charitable or administrative destination. Demolition was not an option because, according to some, it would be seen internationally as Austria’s refusal to face the past. In 2019 it was decided that the building would be converted into a police station.

The refurbishment of the house was then delayed due to the corona pandemic. The total cost of the renovation is now estimated at 20 million euros. The police station should be finished in 2025.

Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in an upstairs apartment in the building rented by his parents. After the then owner passed away, the property was sold to the Pommer family. He had to hand it over to the Nazi regime in 1938, who turned it into a national monument. The family got the house back in 1977.