Auschwitz Museum says no to "Pokemon Go"
WARSAW, Poland - The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum says it does not allow people to play "Pokemon Go" on their smartphones during visits to the former German death camp because it is "disrespectful."
The request comes just one day the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. released a statement saying the playing wildly popular app was "not appropriate in the museum, which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism."
Much like the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Auschwitz Museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told The Associated Press on Wednesday that its authorities are asking game producers to exclude the site of the former Nazi German death camp from being a "pokestop," where players can play the game.
He said allowing such games to be active on the authentic grounds of the former death camp is "disrespectful to the memory of the victims of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp on many levels and it is absolutely inappropriate."
The museum is a site of commemoration for the estimated 1.1 million people killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau and to the survivors who suffered as camp inmates. Most of the victims were European Jews who perished in the gas chambers, but there were also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and others.
Earlier in the day the Auschwitz memorial wrote on Twitter: "Do not allow playing #PokemonGO on the site of our Memorial and similar places. It's disrespectful on many levels."
"Pokemon Go" is a hugely popular new reality game that uses GPS and allows players to search locations in the real world to find virtual little creatures.
It has caused a lot of controversy, from the way it collects the personal data of players, to various safety concerns.
Police have had to warn the public about the dangers of playing the game while driving, and some distracted players have reportedly wiped out as they wandered public places in search of Pokemon. In Missouri, four men committed a string of robberies by targeting their victims through the game, CBS affiliate KMOV reported.