Jewish and Catholic faith leaders condemned a Halloween parade float that carried a replica of the gate to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz as the designer behind it apologized, saying he made it “with no ill intent.”

The replica gate, topped with the sign, “Arbeit macht frei” (work will set you free), was included on the float made for Saint Joseph Catholic School in Hanover for a parade Thursday. Hanover is in a rural area about 50 miles northwest of Baltimore.

Nazi German forces murdered more than a million people at the Auschwitz site in southern Poland between 1940 and 1945. Most of their victims were Jews killed on an industrial scale in gas chambers, but victims also included Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, gay people, and others.

A video of the parade shows the float, towed by a pickup truck, go through the central square in Hanover, decorated with pumpkins, ghosts and a sign reading “SHAM ROCK-N-ROLL,” as “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard plays in the background. About a dozen kids and some adults, many dressed in green, walked beside it as the parade commentator urged spectators to cheer. The sign was at the back of the float.

The Catholic bishop whose territory includes the school, the Rev. Timothy C. Senior in Harrisburg, issued a written apology on Saturday.

“The inclusion of this image — one that represents the horrific suffering and murder of millions of innocent people, including six million Jews during the Holocaust — is profoundly offensive and unacceptable,” Senior wrote. “While the original, approved design for this float did not contain this imagery, it does not change the fact that this highly recognizable symbol of hate was included.”