Four Germans have been caught laying white roses in memory of Adolf Hitler at the house where the Nazi dictator was born in western Austria on the anniversary of his birth, police said on Monday.
Police in Upper Austria province said the four people - two sisters and their partners, in their 20s and early 30s - went to the building on Saturday to lay white roses in its window recesses. One of the four people gave the stiff-armed Hitler salute as they posed for photos, officers added.
The group, from Bavaria, a state in the southeast of Germany, had been laying flowers on a window ledge at the house. Patrolling officers noticed the group and took them to a police station for questioning.
The house where Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau Am Inn, Austria (AFP/Getty Images)The woman said that she hadn't meant the salute seriously, but officers found a chat with the others on her cellphone in which they shared Nazi-themed messages and pictures. Police said they were reporting all four to prosecutors on suspicion of violating the Austrian law that bans the symbols of Nazism.
Police patrols are stepped up on April 20 each year, especially around the house where Hitler was born. Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn.
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The Nazi dictator lived in Braunau am Inn in Upper Austria until he was three years old, when his family moved to the nearby Bavarian city of Passau. After lengthy wrangling over the future of the house where he was born, work started last year on turning it into a police station with a human rights training centre - a project meant to make it unattractive as a pilgrimage site for people who glorify Hitler.
Austria's government took control of the dilapidated building in 2016, but film director Günter Schwaiger, who filmed a documentary about Hitler, said the interior ministry's plans seemed to be in line with the Nazi warmonger's wishes for his childhood home. He said that an article from a local newspaper published on May 10, 1939, mentioned Hitler's wish to transform his home into offices for the district authorities.
During a press conference last summer, Mr Schwaiger urged the government to rethink its plans, saying that transforming the house into a police station would amount to the administrative use the dictator had envisaged. However, an interior ministry spokesperson said: "Everything will go ahead as planned."
The transformation of the 800-square metre corner house is estimated to be €20million (£17million). The work is scheduled to be completed by 2025 and the police station is set to be operational by 2026.
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