US actress Whoopi Goldberg has been forced to apologise once again over new public statements on the Holocaust.
Earlier this year, Ms Goldberg was suspended from her US talk show for describing the Nazi genocide as “white-on-white violence”
Now The Sister Act and Ghost star has been forced to go back and explain yet another statement on the issue after she claimed the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis was not “initially about race”.
US broadcaster ABC suspended Ms Goldberg for two-weeks from her $8 million-a-year presenting role on the daytime television show The View in February after she said the Holocaust was about “man’s inhumanity to man” rather than race and was forced to apologise.
Despite this, last week, the actress and comedienne appeared to reiterate her controversial stance in an interview published in The Times.
Asked about the Nazi regime’s view that Jews were a race, the Academy Award winner 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?”
She went on to say that the Holocaust “wasn’t originally” about race.
She said: “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.”
She also claimed that being a black person was identifiable whereas being a Jewish person was not, stating: “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,” she said regarding the backlash sparked by her televised remarks on the matter.
In response, on social media, Holocaust survivor and author Lucy Lipner accused Ms Goldberg of “using the Holocaust as her punching bag.”
“We told her that her comments harm us and she simply doesn’t care. I survived the Nazis and the Holocaust, so I’ll be damned if I let a comedy has-been, peddling a fake Jewish name get the better of me,” she went on.
Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League also questioned Ms Goldberg’s comments. He said: “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.”
While Arsen Ostrovsky, from the Israel-based advocacy group The International Legal Forum, called for Ms Goldberg to be sacked by ABC. He said: “So, after supposed ‘apology’ earlier in year, Whoopi Goldberg doubles down on her vile remarks that the Holocaust was not about race, and instead ‘white on white’ violence. Someone get this ignorant fool off the air!”.
Following the latest outcry Ms Goldberg once again offered her “sincere apologies”. Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine, she said: “It was never my intention to appear as if I was doubling down on hurtful comments, especially after talking with and hearing people like rabbis and old and new friends weighing in.”
She added that she was “still learning,” but stressed” “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.”
Ms Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson but has previously said her stage name is a nod to alleged Jewish ancestry.
The television personality has also spoken about the affinity she feels with the Jewish people, telling the audience at a charity event in 2011: “I just know I am Jewish. I practice nothing. I don’t go to temple, but I do remember the holidays. Religion is a lot of work, it’s exhausting. So I keep it simple, I have a pretty good relationship with God. We talk.”
