Auschwitz memorial bans playing Pokemon Go

Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland — The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum said it does not allow people to play “Pokemon Go” on their smartphones during visits to the former German death camp because it is “disrespectful.”

Museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki said Wednesday that its authorities are asking game producers to exclude the site of the former Nazi German death camp from games.

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.

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.

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.”