Sawt Falasteen - Hitler's Austrian birthplace to become a police station

The authorities hope that its transformation will bring to an end a long and delicate debate over what to do with the site, in a country often criticised for not taking full responsibility for its role in the Holocaust.

After a 20-million-euro ($23-million) refurbishment finished three years behind schedule, the unassuming building where one of history's most notorious figures was born in the centre of the town of Braunau-am-Inn is all but unrecognisable.

The roughcast yellow walls of the 17th-century home near the German border, where the future Fuehrer was born on April 20, 1889, have been whitewashed over by the Austrian architecture firm Marte.

A police sign hangs above the entrance, while the pavement still bears a memorial stone with the inscription: "For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism. Millions of Dead Warn."

After Hitler's Germany annexed its Alpine neighbour in 1938, 65,000 Austrian Jews were killed and another 130,000 forced into exile.

But the country's most popular political party is now the far-right FPOe, which was founded by former Nazis. Around 37 percent of Austrians back the party, according to polling aggregator Europe Elects.

The house, which had been in the hands of the same family from 1912, was from 1972 leased to the Austrian state and used as a centre for disabled people, who were also among the Third Reich's victims.

- 'Absurd' -

Despite neo-Nazis frequently flocking to the address, its last private owner, Gerlinde Pommer, vetoed any transformation of the house and contested its expropriation by the state until the very end.

Three years after Austria passed a law in 2016 to take control of the dilapidated building, the Supreme Court finally approved the 810,000-euro purchase of the 800 square-metre (8,600 square-foot) property.

Of the options for what to do with it once bought, demolishing the site was out of the question for historians. They urged Austria to face up to its role in the Nazis' murder of more than six million Jews, along with Roma, LGBTQ people and communists.

After opting against turning it into a historical monument to avoid drawing extremists, an expert commission decided to make it a police station.

The Austrian government insisted that the permanent police presence would "clearly show" that no commemoration of Nazism would be acceptable and would "neutralise" the site.

"But that's absurd: humanity will not forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born," Robert Eiter, spokesman for the Mauthausen Committee Austria, an association of escapees from the concentration camp, told AFP.

"And this renovation will not prevent a single neo-Nazi from making the pilgrimage to Braunau."

W.Mansour--SF-PST