Hitler's birthplace to keep anti-facist memorial outside house

The Austrian town in which Adolf Hitler was born has voted to retain an anti-facist, anti-war "remembrance stone" outside the dictator's former home.

The stone, which bears the German language inscription: "For peace, freedom and democracy, never again fascism, millions of dead remind [us]," was placed outside the house in 1989.

Recently, the memorial became the subject of a discussion in Branau am Inn on the German-Austrian border where Hitler lived until the age of 3 ahead of the building's imminent transformation into a police station.

An expert commission set up by the Austrian Interior Ministry to consider the memorial stone's future recommended it be moved to another central location in the town.

At the same time, the commission recommended the text changed to reference Austrian culpability in the crimes of the Nazis.

Attracting neo-Nazi visitors

However, the town's council this week unanimously voted to override the commission and keep the stone, together with its existing text, at its current location outside the house in which Hitler was born.

"The text was correct in 1989 when it was originally installed and is still correct today," said Braunau Deputy Mayor Hubert Esterbauer of the right-wing FPOe party, confirming the decision on Thursday.

The unassuming three-storey building in the centre of Braunau has been attracting neo-Nazi visitors since the 1950s.

During its transformation into a police station, all changes to the facade, windows and roof made under Nazi rule will be reversed. Construction is not set to begin for several months, Esterbauer said.