In a recent interview, actress, producer, and co-host of The View, Whoopi Goldberg (not her given name! (See below.), appeared to still believe that the Holocaust was a “white on white” issue—an assertion that earned her a two-week suspension earlier this year from the talk show.
In a conversation with the Sunday Times of London over the weekend, Goldberg told the reporter, “My best friend said, ‘Not for nothing is there no box on the census for the Jewish race. So that leads me to believe that we’re probably not a race.’”
When the reporter pressed that the Nazis considered the Jewish people as a race group, Goldberg replied, “Yes, but that’s the killer, isn’t it? The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying? It wasn’t originally [about race].
“Remember who they were killing first. They were not killing racial; they were killing physical. They were killing people they considered to be mentally defective. And then they made this decision.”
Goldberg insisted the Nazis targeted people based on their physical traits, not race. She referenced that the Nazis came for those of African descent and seemed to imply that Jewish people could go undetected, unlike black people. She also thought the previous firestorm over her comments was an overreaction. “It doesn’t change the fact that you could not tell a Jew on a street. You could find me. You couldn’t find them. That was the point I was making. But you would have thought that I’d taken a big old stinky dump on the table, butt naked.”
That is truly amazing—the Nazis didn’t know who was Jewish, but managed to murder 6,000,000 Jews!
On Tuesday, Goldberg insisted she was not “doubling down” that the genocide of the Holocaust was not about race. She said she was only trying to “convey to the reporter what I had said and why and attempted to recount that time. It was never my intention to appear as if I was doubling down on hurtful comments.”
“I’m still learning a lot and believe me, I heard everything everyone said to me. I believe that the Holocaust was about race, and I am still as sorry now as I was then that I upset, hurt and angered people. My sincere apologies again, especially to everyone who thought this was a fresh rehash of the subject. I promise it was not,” Goldberg said in a statement.
“In this time of rising antisemitism, I want to be very clear when I say that I always stood with the Jewish people and always will. My support for them has not wavered and never will.”
Whoopi Goldberg—a very Jewish-sounding name—is just her stage name. She has no Jewish ancestry. Goldberg’s birth name is Caryn Elaine Johnson. However, in past interviews, she said she feels connected to Judaism. “I just know I am Jewish. I practice nothing. I don’t go to temple, but I do remember the holidays.”
Before Goldberg issued a statement clarifying her beliefs, the Anti-Defamation League again denounced the actress’s remarks.
Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the League, tweeted that Goldberg’s comments in the Sunday Times were “deeply offensive and incredibly ignorant.”
“The Nazis set out to exterminate the Jewish people, whom they viewed as inferior to the mythical “Aryan master race.” They used pseudo-scientific theories of race to justify their anti-Jewish ‘race laws’ and systemic slaughter of millions. She needs to apologize immediately and actually commit to educating herself on the true nature of #antisemitism.”
Goldberg’s interview in the Sunday Times was intended to promote her newest film, “Till,” based on the true story of 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was brutally killed by white supremacists in 1955, and his mother’s quest for justice.
