ヒトラー生家、１０月に改修工事開始　オーストリア内務省

【ウィーンＡＦＰ＝時事】オーストリア内務省は２１日、ナチス・ドイツ総統、アドルフ・ヒトラーの生家について、人権啓発施設を併設した警察署に改修する工事を予定通り１０月に開始すると発表した。一方、ドキュメンタリー映画監督は、生家を官署として利用するのはヒトラーが望んでいたことだとし、計画に異議を唱えている。（写真はオーストリア内務省内の庁舎内で公開された、アドルフ・ヒトラーの生家の改修計画図〈資料写真〉）
　ヒトラーは１８８９年、ドイツと国境を接するオーストリア北部ブラウナウにある、広さ８００平方メートルの建物で誕生。居住期間はわずかだったが、世界各地からネオナチが訪れていた。
　政府はネオナチの「聖地」になるのを防ぐため、荒廃していた建物を２０１６年に接収し、改修を決定した。
　内務省報道官はＡＦＰに対し、改修工事は予定通り「１０月２日に始める予定」だと認めた。
　一方、この家に関するドキュメンタリーを８月下旬に公開予定のオーストリアの映画監督、ギュンター・シュバイガー氏は２１日に記者会見し、政府に計画の再考を呼び掛けた。同氏は、生家を官署に改修するのがヒトラーの希望だったとする１９３９年５月１０日付の地元紙の記事を示し、警察署に改修すればヒトラーの「意向に沿う」形になってしまうと語った。
　改修費用は２０００万ユーロ（約３２億万円）程度。工事は２０２５年までに完了し、２０２６年に警察署として開設する計画だ。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2023/08/22-15:25）

The redesign of Adolf Hitler's birth house will go ahead as planned, starting on October 2, Austria's interior ministry said Monday, after a documentary aired new claims about the late Nazi dictator's wishes for it.
Following years of legal wrangling, the government decided to turn the house in the northern Austrian town of Braunau, where Hitler was born in 1889, into a police station with a human rights training centre.
In a bid to prevent the building on the border with Germany from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine, the government took control of the dilapidated building in 2016.
The expropriation ended a bitter saga between the state and the former owner.
The construction (to convert the house) is scheduled to start on 2 October 2023, an interior ministry spokesman confirmed to AFP.
Everything will go ahead as planned, he added.
But Austrian director Guenter Schwaiger, who is due to release a documentary about the house in late August, said the ministry's plans for the house's future use will always be suspected of being in line with the dictator's wishes.
As evidence Schwaiger cited the discovery of a local newspaper article from 10 May 1939, which states that it was Hitler's wish to have his birth house converted into offices for the district authorities.
Transforming the house into a police station would amount to the administrative use the dictator had envisaged all along, Schwaiger said at a press conference Monday, calling on the government to rethink its plans.
The controversial redesign of the 800-square-metre (8,600-square-feet) corner house is currently estimated to cost some 20 million euros ($21.76 million) and expected to be completed by 2025.
The police station is to become operational by 2026.
Although Hitler only spent a short time at the property, it has continued to draw Nazi sympathisers from around the world.
Germany annexed Austria in 1938, and although many top henchmen from Hitler downwards were Austrians, historians say the small Alpine country was slow to acknowledge for many years its shared responsibility for the Holocaust and the other crimes of the Nazis before and during World War II..