Pokémon Go is a fun new game where players can search for Pokémon in real life. Pokémon can be found in schools, malls, cemeteries, and even the Holocaust Museum.
The memorial for the victims of Nazism is an inappropriate place to play a video game. The brutal murder of six million Jews does not belong as a “fun” stop in the Pokemon universe. By making the Holocaust Museum into a Poké Stop, the game makes a mockery of one of the worst genocides in history.
Sign this petition to tell Niantic Labs to remove the Holocaust Museum as a Poké Stop.
An image circulating online shows a Pokémon called Koffing, who emits poisonous gas, floating by a sign for the museum's Helena Rubinstein Auditorium. The auditorium features the testimonies of the Jews who survived the gas chambers. The horrifying picture has been removed from imgur, but the Holocaust Museum still has three Poké Stops, where free in-game items can be found.
It’s absurd that this game is drawing people to the memorial space for millions of men, women, and children who were systematically murdered in excruciating pain just to catch a bright yellow Pikachu.
With this game you can hear the stories of women whose new babies were ripped from their arms and fed to dogs by bored Nazis while searching for Charizard, the fiery dragon.
Or see piles of shoes from the victims of Nazi Doctor Mengele’s deadly human experiments, like the one in which he tortured a man to see how much pain he could withstand, or removed a person’s limbs to see how many body parts a human actually needs to live, while looking for Jigglypuff, an adorable pink Pokémon.
Encouraging young people to play a game in the same space where we pay tribute to those who were worked until they were skeletal or suffocated to death in gas chambers is insensitive and wrong.
Sign this petition to tell Niantic Labs to remove the Holocaust Museum as a Poké Stop.
