The mayor of a Belgian town 31 kilometres west of Brussels has defended a carnival float depicting caricatures of Strictly Orthodox men surrounded by bags of money.
Aalst’s mayor Christoph D’Haese said it was not up to him to forbid such displays and that “the carnival participants had no sinister intentions.”
Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws reported last weekend’s carnival also features men wearing robes resembling members of the Ku Klux Klan.
But local Jewish leaders said the caricatures depicting crooked noses and large piles of money were typical of Nazism. One of the pink-clad figures wearing a shtreimel — the fur hat worn by many Strictly Orthodox Jews — was depicted with a white rat resting on his shoulder.
