Holocaust, Auschwitz museums say no to Pokémon Go

Officials at the Holocaust Museum and Poland’s Auschwitz Memorial are calling on Pokémon Go maker Niantic to take their sites off the locations where players can hunt cartoon creatures in the popular augmented reality app, saying it dishonors Holocaust victims.

Many players reported seeing the digital Pokémon creatures within the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The site is being used as a “PokeStop” for players to get in-game items.

Players in the mobile phone game Pokémon Go must capture digital Pokémon characters, which appear hovering over the player’s real-world surroundings. Since launching last Thursday, the game has taken smartphone users by storm. It has passed Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp in daily usage time.

Andrew Hollinger, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s communications director, said Pokémon Go is not appropriate for a memorial dedicated to the victims of Nazism. Hollinger is attempting to have the museum removed from the game.

“Technology can be an important learning tool, but this game falls far outside our educational and memorial mission,” Hollinger said in a statement to USA TODAY.

Memorial and Museum Auschwitz — the site of mass executions of Jews and others during World War II — also told Niantic Labs to stop allowing Pokémon Go to use its site in the game, according to a tweet from its official Twitter account.

The creators of Pokémon Go, Niantic Labs, had previously used Nazi concentration camps as destinations inside its other augmented reality game, Ingress.

Niantic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.