Hitler’s childhood home becomes a police station in US$24 million revamp
Holocaust campaigners say putting police in the dictator’s former home is a ‘problematic’ way of dealing with the town’s dark history
Turning the house where Adolf Hitler was born into a police station has raised mixed emotions in his Austrian hometown.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Sibylle Treiblmaier, outside the house in the town of Braunau am Inn on the border with Germany.
While it might discourage far-right extremists from gathering at the site, it could have “been used better or differently”, the 53-year-old office assistant said.
The government wants to “neutralise” the site and passed a law in 2016 to take control of the dilapidated building from its private owner.
Austria, which was annexed by Hitler’s Germany in 1938, has repeatedly been criticised in the past for not fully acknowledging its responsibility in the Holocaust.