The game involves using a mobile device to find and capture virtual Pokemon characters at real life locations, including apparently inside the Washington-based museum. According to The Daily Dot, a Twitter user is claiming that someone found a Koffing inside of the museum, more specifically inside of the Helena Rubinstein Auditorium where the walls are lined with testimonials about survivors of gas chambers.
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They are both reportedly also Pokestops, where players can collect virtual items like snacks and medicine for Pokemon, but officials at the museum are trying to get it removed from the game.
The digital creatures have been reported at the former concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and the National September 11 Memorial in NY, provoking frustrated responses from the representatives of some of the sites.
“It’s a place of peace and prayer and reflection and it’s just not appropriate to play the Pokemon game there, so we’re asking those Pokemon hunters to go elsewhere”, Kunich said.
In “Pokemon Go”, the Pokemons need to be hunted through the smartphone’s Global Positioning System location using augmented reality, as per CBC News.
“Technology can be an important learning tool, but this game falls far outside our educational and memorial mission”, Hollinger said in a statement, per USA Today.
“Playing Pokemon Go in a memorial dedicated to the victims of Nazism is extremely inappropriate”, Andrew Hollinger said.
A spokeswoman for Niantic, the gaming startup that teamed with the Pokemon company to make Pokemon Go, pointed out that the game is not yet officially available for download in Europe.
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During a visit to the museum on Tuesday, a Reuters reporter saw various visitors using phones to take photos or send messages, but no one obviously playing games.
