Whoopi Goldberg is under attack — again — after appearing to double down on the inaccurate comments about the Holocaust that got her suspended from “The View” earlier this year. He has since apologized a second time.
In an interview with British newspaper The Sunday Times published over the weekend, Goldberg argued that the Holocaust was not initially about race. She apologized in January after Jewish groups criticized her for saying the Nazi-led genocide of some 6 million European Jews between 1933 and 1945 “wasn’t about race.”
“Initially it wasn’t [about race],” Goldberg said in the new interview. “Remember who they killed first. They weren’t killing racially; they physically killed. They killed people they thought were mentally deficient. And then they made this decision.”
She spoke on the subject after the reporter who interviewed her noted that the Nazis viewed Jews as a race.
“That’s the killer, isn’t it?” Goldberg said. “The oppressor tells you what you are. Why do you believe him? They are Nazis. Why believe what they say?”
Referring to the controversy earlier this year, Goldberg said: “You can’t tell a Jew on the street. Maybe you can find me.
Photo by: Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Images
“That was the point I was making,” he told the interviewer. “But you’d have thought I caught a big smelly piece of garbage on the table with my bare ass.”
In a statement to HuffPost through his publicist, Goldberg offered a “sincere apology” and said he believed the Holocaust was about race.
“Recently, doing press in London, I was asked about my comments earlier this year. I tried to convey to the journalist what I said and why, and I tried to tell about that period,” the statement said. “It was never my intention to seem like I doubled down on hurtful comments, especially after speaking and hearing people like rabbis and friends old and new weigh in.”
Goldberg’s statement continued: “I’m still learning a lot and believe me, I’ve heard everything everyone has told me. I think the Holocaust was about race and I’m still as sorry today as I was then that I upset, hurt and angered people.”
Acknowledging that anti-Semitism is on the rise, she added: “I want to be very clear when I say that I have always been with the Jewish people and always will be.”
Several prominent Jewish organizations criticized his latest comments, particularly in light of the recent rise in anti-Semitism from prominent figures and hate speech directed against the Jewish people.
“Whoopi Goldberg’s comments about the Holocaust and race are deeply offensive and incredibly disappointing, especially given that this is not the first time she has made such remarks,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. statement to The Hill on Tuesday. “At a time when anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise in the United States, they should realize that making such ignorant claims can have real consequences.”
Monday, of course, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum tweeted a passage from a letter written by Adolf Hitler in 1919. In it, the Nazi leader stated that “Jews are definitely a race” and called them a “non-German alien race.” The museum did not mention Goldberg in the tweet, but highlighted all uses of the word “race” in the text.
In February, ABC News president Kim Godwin suspended Goldberg for two weeks for what she called his “incorrect and offensive comments.” In an apology at the time, Goldberg said she had been corrected and was sorry for the pain I had caused her.
