Whoopi Goldberg apologizes for Holocaust remarks: 'I'm sorry for the hurt I have caused'
Whoopi Goldberg is offering a mea culpa after saying that the Holocaust "isn't about race" during a contentious segment of The View on Monday.
"On today's show, I said the Holocaust 'is not about race, but about man's inhumanity to man.' I should have said it is about both," the View cohost said in a statement posted to social media hours after the broadcast. "As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, 'The Holocaust was about the Nazi's systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race.' I stand corrected."
Goldberg added, "The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I'm sorry for the hurt I have caused." She signed the note as "Written with my sincerest apologies."
Heidi Gutman/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Whoopi Goldberg
Goldberg came under fire for remarks she made during a discussion about how a Tennessee school board banned Maus, the Pulitzer-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust. Goldberg initially said that the Holocaust "is white people doing it to white people; y'all go fight amongst yourselves." Later in the segment she added: "If you're going to do this, let's be truthful about it, because the Holocaust isn't about race. It's not about race."
When cohost Joy Behar pointed out that the Nazis saw Jewish people as "a different race," Goldberg disagreed. "It's about man's inhumanity to man," she said. "That's what it's about."
In addition to Greenblatt's response, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum tweeted links to Goldberg of a "seven-chapter online course about the history of the #Holocaust." The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, meanwhile, tweeted, "Racism was central to Nazi ideology. Jews were not defined by religion, but by race. Nazi racist beliefs fueled genocide and mass murder."
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