New role for Hitler birthplace

AUSTRIA: Austrian MPS have voted to seize the house where Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was born and turn it into a workshop for disabled people.

A large majority approved a compulsory purchase law tabled by the government to end years of wrangling with the owners of the dilapidated three-storey house in Braunau am Inn.

The law did not specify what should happen to No 15 Salzburger Vorstadt Street in the small town on Austria’s northern border with Germany, though Wolfgang Sobotka, the interior minister, favoured knocking it down to stop it being a shrine to neo-nazis.

Conservationists have opposed demolition because the yellowpainted former guest house, where Hitler was born on the top floor in 1889, lies in the middle of a protected area.

Josef Puhringer, the provincial governor, argued that destroying the house would have amounted to ‘‘tearing down a piece of burdensome history’’. He said it would be renovated and offered for the use of the disabled.

Under the Nazis, disabled people faced forced sterilisation and extermination.

Although Hitler spent only the first few weeks of his life at the house, it has drawn Nazi sympathisers. Every year on Hitler’s birthday, anti-fascist protesters organise a rally outside the building.

Gerlinde Pommer, who has rented the building to the Austrian state since 1972 for around €4800 (NZ$7100) a month, will receive compensation. Her family has owned it for nearly 100 years.

The government used it as a centre for people with disabilities, but the arrangement ended five years ago when Pommer refused to allow renovation works. She also rejected a purchase offer by the interior ministry. - The Times