US: Google apologises for Nazi camps in Ingress game

Google has apologised after Nazi concentration camps were featured in the reality mobile game Ingress.

The game involves players fighting for land to eventually win over Earth.

Players are free to add historical locations of their choice to the game, however the locations first have to be approved by Ingress.

The game is designed by Google's Niantic Labs under the leadership of John Hanke who is previously credited with products, such as Google Earth.

Hanke apologised in a statement and said: "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.

"We apologise that this happened."

Günter Morsch, the head of the Sachsenhausen Memorial in Germany told a local newspaper Die Zeit, reported USA Today: "All of us here are completely appalled. This is most definitely no place for video games."

Sachsenhausen was a Nazi concentration camp located in Oranienburg that mostly held political prisoners from 1936 to 1945.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Avraham Cooper offered to give the Ingress team a lesson in history.

"There are a lot of young people out there, maybe including the people running some important companies, who lack some basic grounding in history. It's not the technology per se that worries me, it's the lack of historical perspective and depth, and quite frankly the lack of values and ethics.

"They could spend the week in Europe at Auschwitz and Dachau and see what they actually represented."