PARIS/NEW YORK (EJP)---UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said she learned with "deep indignation" about the fake Nazi rail car that paraded during a Carnival  in Belgium where SS officers revel and drink champagne, to the tune of popular German songs.

The rail car was reminiscent of those used to deport Jews to concentration camps during the Holocaust. Photos in the Belgian press showed the men dressed in full Nazi regalia with a Hasidic Jewish boy character on a rail car, decorated with posters depicting pails labeled, “Zyklon,” the chemical used in the Nazi gas chambers.

The Aalst Carnival is inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Bukova reacted after receiving a letter from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in New York asking her "to publicly disassociate UNESCO from this repugnant incident."

“I am deeply shocked by this unacceptable act that is an insult to the memory of the 6 million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. This Nazi rail car goes against all the values of the Aalst Carnival, which is inscribed as part of humanity’s cultural heritage, as well as against the values of UNESCO, which works for mutual understanding, tolerance and peace,” Bokova said in a statement.

“The history of the Holocaust must not be trivialized for the purposes of a local political situation or to fuel hatred. This testifies to the deeply worrying belittling of the Holocaust and the deportations, in the very heart of the continent where this tragedy occurred.”

“I condemn firmly this violation of the spirit of the Aalst Carnival, characterized by freedom and satire, which cannot justify the recourse to antisemitic stereotypes,” the UNESCO head said.

Belgium authorities have been contacted, as foreseen in the Directives of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, whose Article 2 stipulates that UNESCO will give consideration solely to “such intangible cultural heritage as is compatible with existing international human rights instruments, as well as with the requirements of mutual respect among communities, groups and individuals, and of sustainable development.”

UNESCO is committed to promoting Holocaust education "as a way to build peace through better understanding and knowledge about the darkest pages of humanity’s history."

"The Organization will not be associated with any declaration or position that goes against its fundamental principles and the objectives of promoting tolerance and mutual understanding on the basis of human rights and human dignity," the Paris-based UN body said.

ADL welcomed Bukova’s remarks "who made clear that the public acts were a violation of the spirit of the Aalst Carnival, characterized by freedom and satire, which cannot justify the recourse to anti-Semitic stereotypes," and referred to the trivialization of the Holocaust to fuel hatred “in the very heart of the continent where this tragedy occurred.”

Under the German occupation, the Nazi police carried out deportations of more than 25,000 Jews from Belgium to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where most were murdered.  Fewer than 2,000 of the deportees survived.

Last September, Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo acknowledged the responsibility of Belgian State in the persecution of Jews in Belgium during WWII.