The exterior view of Adolf Hitler’s birth house [Photo- AP Photo:Kerstin Joensson]
Austria has revealed its plan to turn the building where Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler was born into a police station.
The building was acquired by the government back in 2016 after a lengthy dispute and has now announced it would be turned into a police station in November.
“A new chapter will be opened for the future from the birth house of a dictator and mass murderer,” Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer told reporters on Tuesday.
The contract for the project was awarded to an Austrian architecture firm Marte.Marte.
Marte.Marte alongside 11 other candidates submitted plans for the building. It will cosmetically change the façade of the building and give it a new roof.
Work is expected to be completed by 2023 and will cost about €5m ($5.6m, £4.5m).
“The neutralisation of this whole location was ultimately at the heart of this result,” interior ministry official Hermann Feiner told reporters.
A rock outside which reads “Fascism never again” is to be moved to a museum in the capital Vienna. A local historian, however, told the BBC that it was very important that the stone should stay in Braunau.
Although the genocidal dictator barely spent time at the property, it has attracted neo-Nazis who traveled to the site and authorities want to ensure it does not attract others in the future.
Hitler was born in an apartment in the 17th Century building in 1889 but his family left a few weeks later for another address in the area and left the town permanently when Hitler turned three.
Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 and for decades presented itself as one of the first victims of the regime.