Two streets of the birthplace of Adolf Hitler in Austria must be renowned following long -standing complaints according to which they commemorate the Nazis, according to officials.
The Braunau Am Inn council made the decision on Wednesday after a “secret vote”, according to local media. He followed a report, commanded by the local government, which concluded that keeping the names was unconstitutional.
The streets are named after composer Josef Reiter and the artist Franz Resl, who were both members of the Nazi party.
About 200 households will obtain a new address after the modification of the names.
The Austrian government has long been criticized by historians for the way it recognized its role in the Second World War, and in particular to position itself as a victim rather than a participant.
The decision to rename the streets was greeted as a “decision with symbolic meaning” by the Mauthausen Committee. At least 90,000 prisoners were killed by the Nazis of the Mauthausen concentration camp in northern Austria between 1938 and 1945.
The chairman of the committee, Willi Mernyi, told local media that they had “worked hard for that” and thanked all those who had supported them.
Robert Etiter, a member of the committee, added that they had suggested that the names were changed to honor the Austrians who actively opposed to the Nazis – the former deputy mayor Lea Olczak, whose father died in Mauthausen, and Maria Stromberger, who joined the resistance while working as a chief nurse of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
Many streets in Austria have already been renamed due to their Nazi associations, including an honoring Ferdinand Porsche, founder of the luxury automotive society, in the city of Linz – but 80 years later since the end of the war, others remain.
About 65,000 Austrian Jews were killed in the holocaust during the Second World War, when the Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler, worked to eradicate the Jewish population of Europe, as well as the Slavic and Roma population.
During the war, the Nazi regime systematically murdered more than six million Jews.
