Austria will convert Adolf Hitler’s birthplace into a police station. The Austrian government tries to prevent the place from becoming a place of worship. Every day, Nazi sympathizers flock to this town of barely 16,000 inhabitants.

This decision by the Austrian government comes after seven years of debate about what to do with it since he expropriated it. In addition, it is not the first conversion since the building that was originally a brewery has had a long list of functions: cultural center, library, school after the Second World War, workshop for people with disabilities for 30 years.

However, none of these decisions has succeeded in erasing the stigma attached to the town of Braunau in which the building is located and which is located near the border with Germany, but this alternative does not seem to be convincing either. The decision of the Ministry of the Interior to convert the symbol of Nazism into a police station was highly contested in Austria and by the residents of Braunau, since it supposedly does nothing more than fulfill what Hitler wanted for the building.

These works will have a cost of about 20 million euros and the controversy also comes in the middle of the powerful resurgence of the Austrian extreme right with the Party of Freedom.