Hitler’s home to be torn down to stop it becoming a shrine
THE house where Adolf Hitler was born is to be demolished, it was revealed yesterday.
The Austrian government is acting to stop it becoming a symbol of the tyrant’s evil regime.
There were fears that the former beer hall could become a place of pilgrimage for neoNazis. Interior minister Wolfgang Sobotka said: “The foundations can remain but a new building will be put up.
“It will be used by a charity or the local authorities.”
The plan for the government-leased house has to be formalised in legislation and voted on in parliament. Mr Sobotka said the move will ensure any link with Hitler will be erased. He was born in the house in Braunau, near Salzburg, on the German border in April 1889 and it has been a problem for decades. The huge yellow building has been empty since 2011, when the government became embroiled in a dispute with the woman owner, Gerlinde Pommer. In the early 1970s the Austrian government signed a lease and turned the building into a centre for the disabled. The arrangement ended five years ago when Pommer refused to give permission for a badly needed renovation.
For years the taxpayer was paying more than £4,000 a month in rent to keep the house empty.
Pommer rejected a offer to buy it.
In July, Austrian authorities decided to compulsorily purchase the building, fearing that it could one day fall into the hands of neo-Nazis who regularly visit the building to pay homage to the dictator.
During the Third Reich it was a place of pilgrimage for Nazis. After the war it served as a disabled workshop, a library and storerooms.
Some of Braunau’s 17,000 residents wanted the building to become a refugee centre, while others favoured a museum depicting Austria’s liberation from the Nazis. government