Pokémon turns up at Auschwitz and Holocaust Museum

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has asked visitors to refrain from playing “Pokémon Go” after characters from the augmented reality game were found inside the museum.

“Playing the game is not appropriate in the museum, which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism,” the museum said.

Pokémon Go uses a phone’s GPS and camera to detect Pokémon characters with a technology that mixes the real and virtual worlds. In just one week, the game has become a global sensation that is on the verge of overtaking Twitter in terms of active users. 

Pokémon figures have also been spotted at other sensitive sites such as the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

“After we were made aware that a number of historical markers on the grounds of former concentration camps in Germany had been added, we determined that they did not meet the spirit of our guidelines and began the process of removing them in Germany and elsewhere in Europe,” Niantic Labs, the game’s producer, said in a statement.