VIENNA – The house where Adolf Hitler was born is to be demolished to stop it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine after years of bitter legal wrangling, Austria’s interior minister said Monday.
Interior minister Wolfgang Sobotka said, “a thorough architectural remodeling is necessary to permanently prevent the recognition and the symbolism of the building”, reported The Irish Times.
Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said that effectively means the house, in the western town of Braunau, will be replaced by a new structure.
Mr Sobotka said he wants to ensure that any association with Hitler be eliminated at the site, now an occasional place of neo-Nazi pilgrimage.
The owner had repeatedly refused to sell the building.
It was unclear whether she changed her mind or if the government took stringent actions to dispossess her of the home.
