“Playing Pokemon Go in a memorial dedicated to the victims of Nazism is extremely inappropriate”, said Andy Hollinger, director of communications at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.in a statement sent to CNNMoney.
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Officials at the Auschwitz Memorial in Poland are joining the calls saying that it is “absolutely inappropriate” for visitors to look for digital creatures at solemn landmarks like the former concentration camp. And at various “PokéStops”, players can get free in-game treats.
Pokemon Go is enabling, and perhaps even encouraging this behavior by not only placing pokemon in these sensitive locales, but also by making these tourist attractions into “pokestops”-physical locations in the real world that serve as a place to stock up on supplies in the game”. And the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles, and Ground Zero memorial, are PokéStops.
Images circulating online in recent days showed the game’s cartoon monsters at several locations inside the Washington, DC, museum, prompting administrators to seek to have the memorial removed from the mobile game, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Tristan plays the Pokemon Go game on his phone in front of Flinders Stret Station on July 13, 2016 in Melbourne, Australia.
“We are attempting to have the Museum removed from the game”.
He also added that “technology can be an important learning tool” and that the museum encourages visitors to use their smartphones in order to engage with exhibits, however, “this game falls far outside of our educational and memorial mission”.
Ingress ran into similar problems when it was released in 2015.
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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.
