Presiding over a not-very-modest ribbon-cutting ceremony in the town of Braunau am Inn on Wednesday, Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner on Wednesday hailed the opening of a new federal police station in an old building, one chosen specifically because of its sentimental value to and a draw for MAGAmerican and other extremists since, as mentioned in the headline, it was where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889. “The Republic of Austria, the state, the county is facing up to this heritage, the terrible heritage of this time, and commits itself to deal with it,” Karner said, per the AP.

“This entails this house and this address,” Karner added as he dedicated the new precinct – in front of which now sits a memorial stone inscribed with “For freedom, democracy and liberty. Never again fascism. Millions of dead remind us” – at the end of a nearly decade-long planning and conversion that cost $22.8 million following the building’s 2017 appropriation from a private owner who had refused to sell for reasons not made clear. They had previously rented it to the government to sub-let to various non-profits so it might have just been asking price rather than any “sentimental” value.

Still, the fact that they spent $22 million and about five years renovating a 19th century residential building instead of just demolishing it and building a new police station for a fraction of the time and cost is just weird and inexplicable. Then again keeping it intact but giving it to, say, an LGBTQ or Jewish organization to operate some kind of community center would probably be painting a target on those people’s backs so maybe the police is station is actually kind of the least bad of all options that were available. Plus it just makes it easier to catch the “tourists,” like the four Germans who were arrested in 2024 for laying white roses in front of the house and then posing for Nazi salutes.