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 The case has prompted extensive media coverage in Austria, which
is still coming to terms with its past as part of Nazi Germany after
Adolf Hitler, who was born in Austria, annexed the country in 1938.
The scene from cult filmmaker Ulrich Seidl's "Im Keller" (In the
Basement) shows five men in traditional dress singing a drinking
song in a room featuring a portrait of Hitler, a swastika flag and
mannequins wearing Nazi uniforms and helmets.
Two of the men from the People's Party - elected to the town council
in Marz in the province of Burgenland after the film was made in
2009 - have now resigned from their posts.
 "We distance ourselves with deepest conviction from any Nazi
ideology and atrocities. To prevent further damage to the community
and the party, we decided voluntarily, with immediate effect, to
withdraw from our council mandate," the two said in a statement on
Friday.
"It was a mistake to take part in the filming."
The men have also left the Austrian People's Party (OVP), junior
coalition partner to Social Democrats in the national government,
OVP's Burgenland group said in a statement.
Austria's far-right Freedom Party this week expelled the 78-year-old
mayor of Gurk in Carinthia province for expressing sympathy for
Nazism. "Re-engagement with National Socialism" has been a crime in
Austria since 1947.
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"I distance myself only from what they did, not from Nazism,"
Siegfried Kampl had been quoted as saying in a newspaper interview.
Austria has for decades maintained that it was Hitler's first victim
and glossed over the enthusiastic welcome he got from many
Austrians.
(Reporting by Michael Shields and Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Sonya
Hepinstall)
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