Actress and television host Whoopi Goldberg issued an apology on Monday night following controversial remarks about the Holocaust on the show which she co-hosts, “The View”.
During a discussion on the show, Goldberg said that “the Holocaust isn’t about race,” but rather about “man’s inhumanity to man.”
Jewish groups slammed Goldberg for the comments, pointing out that the Nazis specifically targeted Jews for extermination.
StopAntisemitism.org tweeted, “Newsflash Whoopi Goldberg: 6 million of us were gassed, starved and massacred because we were deemed an inferior race by the Nazis. How dare you minimize our trauma and suffering!”
American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris wrote, “Whoopi Goldberg absurdly claims the Holocaust ‘isn’t about race.’ Nazi Germany considered all Jews a ‘subhuman race.’ That’s why they wanted to exterminate the entire Jewish people, including my family, & almost succeeded. Please rethink & apologize.”
The Auschwitz Museum, meanwhile, tweeted a link to a seven-chapter online course about the history of the Holocaust and made sure to tag Goldberg.
Goldberg posted the apology to her Twitter account late on Monday night.
“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,” she wrote. “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.”
“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 added, before concluding, “Written with my sincerest apologies, Whoopi Goldberg.”