Austria is turning Hitler’s home into a police station, a move opposed by a group of Holocaust survivors.

Adolf Hitler’s birthplace near the Austrian-German border officially begins a new life as a police station on Wednesday, a move the Austrian government hopes will prevent it from serving as a haven for neo-Nazis.

After years of debate about the large, traditional one-story house in the town of Braunau am Inn, which was privately owned and had a charity, Austria made a compulsory purchase in 2017. The government announced in 2019 that it would be renovated and turned into a police station, with work starting in 2023.

Even before the conversion, the only sign of its historical importance was a rock on the road from the Mauthausen concentration camp with the inscription “Never again be fascism” which does not refer to Hitler. The rock is always there. The only sign added to the white facade reads “Police.”

“The aim was to prevent any association with Adolf Hitler, to end that mystery,” the head of the Austrian interior ministry’s history department, Stephan Mlczoch, told reporters on a tour of the building.

That mystique was fostered by the Nazi cult of personality around Hitler, under whose rule the “Fuehrer’s birthplace” was an art museum. Hitler stayed there for a few weeks in 1889 before his family moved out, Mlczoch said.

Passers-by often stop to take pictures. Local officials said there were now only “isolated incidents” involving tourists, fewer than before.

Although they did not elaborate, the Hitler salute and other Nazi symbols are banned in Austria.

Asked about the community’s response to the project, Mayor Johannes Waidbacher told Reuters: “I think overall, the people of Braunau have accepted it and can live with it.”

Waidbacher was on a commission that recommended the building be used for charitable or official administrative purposes. Ultimately, having a charity there would make it more accessible to the community, he said.

“I think it’s not a bad way, but whether it works as we all hope and expect, we’ll have to wait and see,” he said.

The head of the Holocaust group doubts the pilgrimage will stop

There has been some opposition, including from the Mauthausen Committee, Austria’s main Holocaust survivor group, which has argued both that the police station is inappropriate and that more should be done to draw attention to Hitler’s crimes.

“Every year at the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial there is a ceremony that says: never come back. And in Braunau they say: let’s forget as soon as possible,” said Robert Eiter of the Mauthausen Committee ⁠and the Network Against Racism and Right-Wing Extremism.

Hitler’s Nazi regime killed nearly six million Jews and several others and groups during the Holocaust. He committed suicide in April 1945 as World War II turned on Germany.

For decades, Austria has argued that it was the first victim of national socialism, having been annexed by Hitler’s Germany in 1938. Now it says that the Austrians were also the perpetrators but it rarely goes into detail.

“The world will never forget where the greatest murderer in history was born. Wikipedia will not change the entry,” said Eiter, adding that it will not reduce the number of neo-Nazis making “the pilgrimage to Braunau.”

Some local residents questioned the conversion of the house.

“I would have preferred if they did something else, but this is what it is,” said Irene, 74, adding that she would have liked the charity to stay there.

However, most were supportive.

“It’s great and a great idea,” said Thomas Spreitz, a real estate agent. “There is always [neo-Nazi] teams there, and now that’s history.”