Hitler's Birthplace Is Finally Transformed

Austria has turned Adolf Hitler's birthplace into a police station, hoping the move will finally strip the building of any dark appeal. The house in Braunau am Inn, a onetime inn where Hitler was born in 1889 and stayed only briefly, has long vexed officials worried it could function as a rallying point for neo-Nazis.

After years of legal wrangling with the former owner and debate over whether to demolish the building, make it a memorial center, or have it be used by a charity, the government seized the property following a 2016 court ruling that allowed it to do so and spent millions remodeling it. Its facade has been altered and Hitler's name does not appear anywhere. As the BBC reports, the sole link to what occurred there is a stone on the street that was brought from the Mauthausen concentration camp and reads, "For Peace, Freedom and Democracy - Never Again Fascism - Millions of Dead Warn." Reuters notes the stone was placed there prior to the building's conversion.