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.
A police priest hands over a blessed cross to police officers during an inauguration ceremony of the birth house of former German dictator Adolf Hitler that is turned into a police station, on July 22, 2026 in Braunau am Inn, Austria. — AFP
“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.
