VIENNA (Reuters) - Two
conservative town council members in eastern Austria have resigned from
their posts and left the People's Party after a documentary film showed
them singing and toasting one another in a basement room filled with
Nazi memorabilia.
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.
"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
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