Austria opened a new police station in Adolf Hitler's former house on Wednesday, in the hope of deterring today's ascendant far-right extremists from making the pilgrimage to the Nazi dictator's birthplace. A police sign hangs above the entrance, while the pavement still bears a memorial stone with the inscription: "For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. After Hitler's Germany annexed its Alpine neighbour in 1938, 65,000 Austrian Jews were killed and another 130,000 forced into exile. An expert commission decided to make it a police station, with the Austrian government insisting that would "clearly show" that no commemoration of Nazism would be acceptable and would "neutralise" the site. But Florian Kotanko of Braunau's Association for Contemporary History said he doubted the conversion would end the controversy.