Per NPR, Adolf Hitler was born above a bar called the Stag in the medieval Austrian town of Braunau am Inn in 1889. He lived in a second-floor apartment rented by his parents, and as he turned Germany into a historical tragedy, the Nazis turned his home into a house of unholy worship. During WWII, the building served as an art gallery and library. After Hitler’s grip on the country was broken, Austrian soldiers wanted to blow up the building, marking what would have been history’s only heroic instance of book-burning. But American soldiers intervened, protecting the building.

In the decades that followed, the building became a bank, a school, and a facility for people with special needs. But as times changed, one thing stayed the same: Hitler’s home belonged to the family of Gerlinde Pommer. In 2012, however, Pommer refused to approve requested renovations, and in 2016, Austria’s government sought to seize the empty property, but Pommer wanted a huge payday to part with Hitler’s birthplace. In 2019, the Austrian Supreme Court ordered the government to pay her $908,000 for the property. 

Government officials wanted to deter neo-Nazis from enshrining the structure. So the decision was made to transform it into a police station. As a constant reminder of the evil it once embodied, a memorial stone is installed with this inscription: “For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again fascism. Millions dead are a warning.” Hopefully humanity heeds it.