Andrew Hollinger, the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s communications director, said the museum, dedicated to victims of Nazism, was not an appropriate place for those playing the game.
Advertisement
The Holocaust Museum is trying to remove itself from the game entirely. Reports have indicated that the Washington museum is not the only anti-Pokemon location around, as the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia is also warding off players that wander to the premises in search of elusive Pokemon.
The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the US want Niantic Labs, the maker of Pokemon Go, to take the two sites off the augmented reality app used by players to hunt cartoon creatures, reported USA Today.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has banned people from playing Pokémon Go on their smartphones during visits to the former death camp.
Officials for the museum are believed to be seeking to get it removed from the game.
Another visitor told The Post they didn’t go to the museum intending to catch Pokemon, and meant no disrespect using the app at the PokeStops inside the building.
Hollinger told the paper the museum is generally open to new technology, and encourages visitors to share their experiences of visiting the exhibits on social media.
Interest in Pokemon GO has surged since its release last week. “But this game falls very much outside that”, he said.
As the players of “Pokemon Go” have to look for the characters of the game on the outside world, some places become instantly a PokeStop.
The game is now available in Germany, but not elsewhere in Europe.
Players can also stumble upon Pokemon while wandering the halls.
Advertisement
As of Monday, the game had been downloaded 7.5 million times -more in a week than the popular dating app Tinder has in its four years of existence.
