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.

“In a democratic country like Belgium this has no place in 2019, carnival or not,” said a statement by the FJO, Belgium’s Forum of Jewish Organisations.

“The Jewish community naturally accepts humour, this is very important in a society, but there are limits that can not be exceeded.

“We have already undergone the effects of the caricatures of [Nazi German newspaper] Der Sturmer in the Second World War.”

A spokeswoman for the European Commission, based in nearby Brussels, called on Belgian authorities to take action: “It should be obvious to all that portraying such representations in the streets of Europe is absolutely unthinkable, 74 years after the Holocaust,” she said, according to The Independent.

“It is the responsibility of the national authorities to take the appropriate measures on the basis of the applicable law.”