The video game “The Cost of Freedom” created by Ukrainian company Alien Games is stirring controversy in Poland, as participants play a Nazi SS officer in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp who is required to select Jewish prisoners to die in gas chambers.
The preview of the game that has not yet been released shows players determining which prisoners will be sent for “delousing” in the gas chambers in Auschwitz and meet their death there.
The game itself displays hard graphic images of prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Creators of the game present it as a “game about the Polish death camps,” which is forbidden by the new Polish law.
The creators of the game also allow players to choose whether they want to play rebel prisoners trying to rebel against the Nazis in the German extermination camp on Polish soil.
Lukasz Lapczy?ski, spokesman for the prosecution in Warsaw, confirmed that an investigation had been launched against the creators of the game and now Polish prosecutors are collecting evidence against the creators of the game for “harming the reputation of Poland and promoting a fascist regime.”
A Polish journalist by the name of Wojciech Weberanowski claims the game was probably developed by Russian programmers who linked it to Ukraine to damage relations between Poland and Ukraine.
According to Weberanowski, one of the developers of the game, Dmitry Davin, worked for many years on Russian television. The game is scheduled to be released this December.
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