Dispute rages in Austria over Hitler's birthplace

By Timo Kirez

GENEVA (AA) - A dispute is raging in Austria over the house where Adolf Hitler was born, decades before becoming Germany’s Fuhrer and prime mover of the Holocaust of some 6 million Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazi dictatorship.

According to plans by the Austrian Interior Ministry, the building in Braunau is to be converted for use as a police station starting in 2026. But a citizens' initiative has been organized to prevent this, as public broadcaster ORF reported Tuesday.

The relocation plans for the police had already been announced in 2020 by then-Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer of the conservative OVP party.

Construction costs for the project have since reportedly risen from an original €5 million ($5.4 million) to around €20 million ($21.7 million), ORF reported. But the citizens' initiative, known as Diskurs Hitlerhaus, is calling for the plans to be reconsidered.

"The connection with Adolf Hitler will always be there, and there is just the question, do I try to erase that, or do I try to deal with it proactively and positively, and that would just be our opinion," a spokesman for the initiative told ORF.

The citizens’ drive calls for the building to be used for another purpose, as another member of the initiative explained: "For example, a site where young people are sensitized to peace, freedom, democracy, tolerance, and mutual mindfulness, or work on these issues.”

A survey showed that the plan to convert it into a police station has little public support, the initiative added. There is to be a public discussion on the matter on May 26.

Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in the house in Braunau, Upper Austria, and spent part of his early childhood in southern Germany. Most of his adult life took place in Munich and Berlin.

In 1945, after the end of World War II, US soldiers occupied Hitler's birthplace, where it temporarily housed an exhibit on the horrors of Nazi death camps.