Picture taken on July 16, 2026 shows the birthhouse of former German dictator Adolf Hitler that is turned into a police station in Braunau am Inn, Austria. The controversial redesign of the house in the northern Austrian town of Braunau started in 2023. Following years of legal wrangling, the government took control of the dilapidated building in 2016 and decided to turn the house, where Hitler was born in 1889, into a police station that will be inaugurated on July 22, 2026. (Photo by KERSTIN JOENSSON / AFP)
Austria opened a new police station in Adolf Hitler’s former house on Wednesday, in the hope of deterring today’s ascendant far-right extremists from making the pilgrimage to the Nazi dictator’s birthplace.
In a ceremony to mark the opening, Johannes Waidbacher, mayor of the small town of Braunau-am-Inn, said he hoped the transformation would show that the local community is “confronting its history, that it is assuming responsibility”.
The decision to turn the house into a police station follows a long and delicate debate over what to do with the site, in a country often criticised for not taking full responsibility for its role in the Holocaust.
“I believe that the opening of the police station today brings clarity to the discussion, perhaps also a bit of calm for the people of Braunau,” the mayor said, in a ceremony also attended by Interior Minister Gerhard Karner.
