FATAL ATTRACTION

Hitler’s Birthplace to Be Turned Into Police Station to Deter Neo-Nazis

The Austrian government is trying to combat it being an attraction.

In a dramatic twist, the three-story building in the heart of Braunau am Inn, Austria, where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 will now be redeveloped into a police station by the government in the hopes that it will become less of a tourist attraction for neo-Nazis. The government had seized the building in 2017 from its owner, Gerlinde Pommer, after she refused for decades to maintain the building, which made it hard to attract tenants that fit into the government’s mandate that it be used for “administrative, educational, or social services purposes.” The government announced that it will hold a design competition for the building this month and announce the winner in 2020. “The future use of the house by the police should send an unmistakable signal that the role of this building as a memorial to the Nazis been permanently revoked,” declared Wolfgang Peschorn, the interior minister of Austria.