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Google PlayWhoopi Goldberg expressed her “sincerest apologies” on Twitter Monday after saying that the Holocaust wasn’t “about race” in a recent segment on The View.
Her comments came as the show’s hosts were discussing a Tennessee school district banning Art Spiegelman’s poignant graphic novel about the Holocaust, Maus. After the panelists focused on whether nudity—cited as a reason to cease teaching the comic—was even an actual concern, Whoopi added a new layer.
“Well also, if you’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it, because the Holocaust isn’t about race. It’s not about race,” she said.
Joy Behar shot back and asked her what she thought it was about, and Whoopi said “man’s inhumanity to man,” since it was “two white groups of people.”
On Twitter, Goldberg wrote she stands “corrected” after scholars on the topic began to reach out to her. “I’m sorry for the hurt that I have caused.” She wrote, “The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never [waver].”
Goldberg’s apology follows numerous public figures and organizations correcting her online, including ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, the Auschwitz Memorial, and (indirectly) the U.S. Holocaust Museum. The Memorial sent Whoopi a seven-chapter online course about the Holocaust.
“No @WhoopiGoldberg, the #Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people – who they deemed to be an inferior race,” Greenblatt wrote on Twitter. “They dehumanized them and used this racist propaganda to justify slaughtering 6 million Jews. Holocaust distortion is dangerous.”
Goldberg also appeared on the Late Show on Monday night, which the Hollywood Reporter noted was taped before she shared her apology. On Colbert, she reiterated her statement but shared that she thought race was something she “could see.”
“It upset a lot of people, which was never ever, ever my intention,” Goldberg said. “I feel, being Black, when we talk about race, it’s a very different thing to me. So I said I thought the Holocaust wasn’t about race. And people got very angry and still are angry. I’m getting a lot of mail from folks and a lot of real anger. But I thought it was a salient discussion because as a Black person I think of race as being something that I can see. So I see you and know what race you are. I thought it was more about man’s inhumanity to man…people said, ‘No, no, we are a race.’ I felt differently. I respect everything everyone is saying to me.”
