Hitler's Austrian town to rename two streets honouring Nazi supporters

Euronews

a day ago

Two streets in Adolf Hitler's Austrian hometown of Braunau am Inn, which bear the name of two Nazi party supporters — music composer Josef Reiter and entertainer Franz Resl — are to be renamed.
Local media reported that the decision was made on Wednesday, following a "secret vote" by the city council, with 28 councillors in favour and nine against.
Local authorities had published a previous report which found that maintaining the street names was unconstitutional.
Once the name change has been enacted, roughly 200 households will have a new address.
The Mauthausen Committee, which raises awareness about what happened at the concentration camp close to Braunau am Inn, said renaming the streets was a decision with "symbolic significance."
At least 90,000 prisoners were killed at the Mauthausen camp, while 65,000 Austrian Jews were assassinated over the course of the Holocaust and 130,000 were forced to flee the country.
The Mauthausen Committee told local media they are paying tribute to local Austrians who fought against the Nazis with the new street names.
Across Austria, the names of other streets and sites have been changed, in order to steer clear from glorifying Nazism.
For instance, in 2022 the city of Linz in Upper Austria announced it would rename "Porsche Street" named after one of the most infamous engineers of the Third Reich.
Another site which has attracted a great deal of controversy in Braunau am Inn Adolf Hitler's childhood home, in which he was born in 1899.
Despite having been used for a variety of purposes — including as a library, a school, but also a shelter for disabled people — for many neo-Nazis it was, and continues to be, a pilgrimage site.
To prevent the house from becoming a mass gathering site for neo-Nazis, the Austrian government bought the house from the property's owner in 2016 under a compulsory purchase order, following a heated public debate.
While many argued that the house should be demolished, critics stated that such a move would amount to a denial of Austria's history and its role in the Holocaust.
In 1989, a memorial stone warning against the dangers of fascism was placed outside the house, which states "For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism. Millions of Dead are a Warning."
Three years on, the Austrian government announced that Hitler's childhood home would undergo lengthy renovations in order to be transformed into a police station.
In Austria, the Freedom Party of Austria — which came in first in the country's September general election, having been founded in the 1950s by former members of the SS and other Nazi veterans — has soared in popularity in recent years.