Hitler’s birth house will be demolished

VIENNA: The house in Austria where Adolf Hitler was born is to be torn down to stop it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine, authorities said on Monday after years of

VIENNA: The house in Austria where Adolf Hitler was born is to be torn down to stop it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine, authorities said on Monday after years of bitter legal wrangling.

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“The Hitler house will be torn down. The foundations can remain but a new building will be erected. It will be used by either a charity or the local authorities,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka told an Austrian newspaper.

He said the decision was based on the recommendations of an expert committee tasked with deciding what to do with the controversial building in the quaint northern town of Braunau am Inn.

The huge yellow house has been empty since 2011 when the government became embroiled in a dispute with owner and local resident Gerlinde Pommer.

For more than a century, her family has owned the large corner house where Hitler was born on April 20, 1889.

A number of cultural organisations previously opposed the building’s demolition because it is part of the historic city centre and therefore under heritage protection.