Museum officials are trying to reach the developers of the “Pokemon Go” game to get the museum removed as a prominent location.
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Officials for the museum are believed to be seeking to get it removed from the game.
A virtual map of Bryant Park is displayed on the screen as a man plays the augmented reality mobile game “Pokemon Go” by Nintendo in New York City, U.S. July 11, 2016.
A spokesman for the museum in Washington said that playing the game inside a memorial to victims of Nazism was “extremely inappropriate”.
“Technology can be an important learning tool, but this game falls far outside of our educational and memorial mission”, Hollinger said.
In Pokémon Go a player take the role of a “trainer”, travelling to real locations to “catch” virtual Pokémon that can be found using a smartphone’s Global Positioning System and camera.
Like many other landmarks, both the museum in Washington and the military cemetery in Virginia are places where players can come across Pokemon creatures.
Hollinger says playing the game seems disrespectful, especially while visitors are inside the Hall of Remembrance.
But the Pokémon critter Koffing, which emits a poisonous gas, popped up at a sign for the Holocaust Museum’s Helena Rubinstein Auditorium – which exhibits testimonials of Jews who survived the gas chambers. “We compiled the Tumblr page PokeMorbid with a series of examples, including war memorials and mausoleums tagged as “gyms”, and Pokemon suddenly appearing at funerals and hospitals”, they wrote on The Conversation.
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The Tumblr page includes screenshots from people purportedly finding Pokemon at Auschwitz, the Mosul front line and the 2009 Bushfires Memorial in Victoria.
