Cemeteries and a museum dedicated to Holocaust survivors should be a place where people can pay their respects to others, not a trendy location for millennials to inappropriately whip out their cell phones and start playing the game.
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Since it was officially released last week, Pokemon GO has been capturing the headlines fairly often for a variety of reasons that are more or less appropriate.
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 Holocaust Museum works as “Pokemon Go” PokeStop, where players can get a lot of free in-game stuff. With that being said, we can assume that the large majority of visitors are responsible enough – on their own – to avoid inappropriate behavior.
LOS ANGELES (AP) As throngs of “Pokemon Go” players traipse around to real-world landmarks in pursuit of digital monsters, some ticked-off property owners are asking to have their locations in the fictional Poke-verse removed.
The app, which has not been officially released in the United Kingdom yet, sees users track down Pokemon stars on their mobile phones.
“I just caught one!”
A now-deleted post on the photo site Imgur shows Koffing, a poisonous gas pokemon, located near a sign for the museum’s Helena Rubinstein Auditorium.
While those at The Ridge are inviting trainers to play the game at their church – there are others who are asking that players stay away. We encourage visitors to use their phones to share and engage with Museum content while here. And of course, I will gladly walk out of my way to find new Pokemon to add to your Pokedex. “It is inconceivable that we should treat this place as a place for games or to have fun”, said Bartosz Bartyzel, spokesperson for the Auschwitz Museum and Memorial.
Pokemon Go has a link set up for people to report delicate locations and contact on its site.
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The game’s developer, Niantic, ran into similar trouble past year when one of its games, Ingress, allowed players to battle for control over real-life locations that happened to include multiple former concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau and Sachsenhausen.
