Hitler's birthplace in Austria to be converted into a human rights training centre

The house in Austria where Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was born will be converted into a human rights training centre for police officers, Austria's Interior Ministry announced this week.

Where was Adolf Hitler born?

Adolf Hitler was born in a building in northwest Austria's Braunau am Inn, 284 km east of Vienna on April 20, 1889. He lived there until his family left when he was three years old.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

What exactly is happening to the place where Hitler was born?

The building where Hitler was born will accommodate the human rights training facility along with a police station.

The plan was first disclosed by the Austrian government in 2019.

ALSO READ |Posters depicting Macron as Hitler found on 120 billboards in France’s Avignon city, cops initiate probe

The decision was made based on the recommendations of an interdisciplinary expert commission concerned with depriving the property of its "mythical appeal to extremist circles," the ministry said in a statement.

"We have to face our past and give this historically burdened place a life-affirming perspective," historian Oliver Rathkolb, a professor at the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna, reportedly said at a press briefing on Tuesday.

Who owned the place where Hitler was born?

The building belonged to Gerlinde Pommerwhose family owned the building for decades until the Interior Ministry began renting the site from her in 1972.

It was reportedly rented out to various charities.

The three-storey house is reportedly empty since 2011, when the tenant, a disability centre, vacated the premises.

ALSO WATCH |Adolf Hitler's ancestry in focus, Russia says Hitler had Jewish roots

After initial calls for the demolition of the building, the government acquired it from Pommer after invoking "special legal authorisation".

After securing the site, the Austrian government remained concerned that it might attract neo-Nazis and others sympathetic to Hitler’s ideology.

"It will be an office for the largest human rights organisation in Austria – the police – and it will also be a centre for training in this fundamentally important topic," Hermann Feiner, the former head of construction and real estate projects at the Ministry of the Interior, said in an official statement.

The conversion is estimated to cost €20 million ($21.5 million). It is expected to be completed by 2025.

After catapulting to Berlin's corridors of power in the 1930s, Hitlerdevised a plan to create his ideal 'master race' by eliminating Jews, Slavs, gypsies, homosexuals and political opponents by forcefully sending them to concentration camps, where they were tortured to death. The Nazis killed about 11 million people under Hitler's regime.

WATCH WION LIVE HERE

You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here.