“Let’s face it, the holocaust isn’t about a race issue, it’s not about that, no. It’s about how people can be inhumane to other people,” Goldberg said. Her colleague Ana Navarro responded: “But it is about a white supremacy that has started persecuting Jews.” According to Whoopi, things worked differently: “It was two groups of white people facing each other, so you can’t speak of a race issue. It’s about how people treat each other, it doesn’t matter if you’re black, white or Jewish, it’s about how you treat each other.”
Goldberg is one of the presenters of the program and her comments caused shocked looks from her colleagues. Not long after, many angry tweets followed on social media. David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, said: “Whoopi Goldberg makes the absurd claim that the Holocaust has nothing to do with race. Nazi Germany regarded the Jewish people as an inferior race and that is why they wanted to exterminate all Jews, including my family. Please think this over again and then come up with an apology.”
The American organization Stop Antisemitism also reacted furiously. “Six million of us were gassed, died and murdered because we were seen as inferior by the Nazis. How dare you minimize our trauma!”
Apologies
Later, Whoopi came back and apologized for her statements. “On the show, I said that the Holocaust wasn’t about race, it was about how people can be inhumane to other people. I should have said it’s about both,” the actress responds to the fuss on Twitter.
“As Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said, the Holocaust was about the systematic destruction by the Nazis of the Jewish people – whom they viewed as an inferior race. I was wrong,” Goldberg said. The ADL is an organization that fights against Jew-hatred. “I have always supported Jewish people from all over the world and that will never stop. I’m sorry I hurt people,” Goldberg said.