Wolfgang Sobotka, then interior minister, said the building should be torn down and a new one built in its place. This was consistent with a previous proposal by a Russian lawmaker who said he wanted to buy a house and blow it up.
However, there was strong criticism that destroying the house was tantamount to denying Austria’s Nazi past.
In 2019, the government announced plans to convert it into a police station and launched an EU-wide competition for architects to submit designs.
Millions of euros have been spent renovating the old yellow building, and it now looks very different than before.
Not everyone is happy with the decision to open a police station. They say it is sending the wrong signal.
Some wanted the house to become a center of accountability, confronting its Nazi past. Others, such as local historian Florian Kotanko, say they would have liked to see the Levensilfe charity return.
“But even these charities didn’t want to come back because they thought it would be used as a fig leaf for political discussions. So the government had to decide in a different way,” Kotanko told the BBC.
The house has no historical markings and the building has security cameras that record the activities of potential neo-Nazi pilgrims.
The only thing that links it to Hitler is a stone on the street outside, erected in 1989.
“Never again fascism. In memory of the millions who died,” it reads.
The stone comes from the nearby concentration camp at Mauthausen.
Hitler’s name is not mentioned. But Florian Kotanco believes that even if neo-Nazi visits decline, the site’s history will never be lost.
“You have to deal with it, and that’s why we all try to deal with it in an open and correct way. It’s not something to be proud of, it’s something you have to deal with the facts.”
