Town struggles to find someone to live in Hitler's house The mayor of the town of Braunau has proposed that the birthplace of the town's most infamous son be turned into flats. Converting the attractive 500-year-old building into flats, he hopes, will bury an unwanted past, and a past, the mayor feels, the town has done more than enough to atone for. We are already stigmatised. Hitler spent just three years of his life here, and they were not the most formative years," Johannes Waidbacher, the mayor, told the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. So we in the city of Braunau are not willing to assume the responsibility for the outbreak of the Second World War. The mayor made the proposal after a disabled centre, the previous tenants of the "Hitler house," moved to new premises. Hitler was born in the building in April 1889 while his father, a customs official, was posted in Braunau, a small town near Salzburg on the German border. When Adolf's father received a new posting three years later the Hitlers moved but left the town with an unfortunate legacy. A small memorial stone reminding people of the millions who perished as a result of Hitler's murderous rule lies near the building, and Mr Waidbacher believes the town needs no more such memorials. "You have to ask the question whether another Holocaust memorial makes sense when there are already so many," he said. But the mayor's proposals have attracted accusations of indifference to the past, and raised fears that the flats will become a must-buy or must-see attraction for neo-fascists. Harry Buchmayr, a local councillor, says that the building already attracts "unwanted" visitors, mainly neo-Nazis wanting to pay homage to the late dictator, and is concerned that converting the building into flats will just attract more. Others question as to just who would want to live in a house with such a distinctive history, while other residents of Braunau - only withdrew honorary citizenship from Hitler last year- feel the building should become a "house of responsibility" where people can meet to discuss the lessons of the past. But the ultimate arbiter on just what will happen to Hitler's birthplace is its mysterious owner, from whom Austria's interior ministry has rented the building since 1972. Her name remains unknown and so far she has shunned all publicity.