Police station opens at Hitler's birthplace in bid to rid site of Nazi link
Austrian authorities have converted Adolf Hitler's birthplace in Braunau am Inn into a police station. The move aims to prevent the site from becoming a destination for neo-Nazi pilgrimage after years of legal battles with the former owner.
Why it matters
It represents a significant state effort to neutralize historical sites associated with extremist figures and prevent the glorification of Nazi ideology.
Image source, Bethany Bell/BBC Image caption, Police were stationed outside the refurbished building as it opened on Wednesday
Austria has opened a police station in the house where Adolf Hitler was born, in the town of Braunau am Inn.
It follows years of controversy about what to do with the 17th-Century former inn, where Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was born in April 1889.
The building has now been substantially refurbished and its facade changed, but it has been a huge headache for Austrian authorities, who want to prevent it from becoming a site of neo-Nazi pilgrimage.
Hitler only lived in Salzburger Vorstadt 15 for a few weeks, before his family moved to another address in Braunau. They left the town for good when he was three years old.
Hitler returned briefly to Braunau in 1938, on his way to Vienna, after he annexed Austria to Nazi Germany.
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