Austria says Hitler birth house redesign to start in October

By AFP 21 August 2023, 8:20 pm

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A man points his finger at a screen showing the planned architectural redesign of the house Adolf Hitler was born in, during a press conference at the interior ministry in Vienna, June 2, 2020. (Joe Klamar/AFP/File)

The redesign of Adolf Hitler’s birth house will go ahead as planned, starting on October 2, Austria’s interior ministry says.

Following years of legal wrangling, the government decided to turn the house, in the northern Austrian town of Braunau, where Hitler was born in 1889, into a police station with a human rights training center.

In a bid to prevent the building on the border with Germany from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine, the government took control of the dilapidated building in 2016.

The expropriation ended a bitter saga between the state and the former owner.

“The construction (to convert the house) is scheduled to start on 2 October 2023,” an interior ministry spokesman confirmed to AFP.

“Everything will go ahead as planned,” he added.