Whoopi Goldberg Apologizes for Holocaust Comments Made on 'The View': 'I'm Incredibly Torn Up'

Whoopi Goldberg is responding to the backlash surrounding comments she made on Monday's episode of The View about the Holocaust. The panel was discussing the recent banning of Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, by a school board in Tennessee. 

"The Holocaust isn't about race. It's about man's inhumanity to man," Goldberg said on The View. "These are two white groups of people."

Her co-host, Joy Behar, disagreed, responding, "Well, they considered Jews a different race." 

Goldberg received lots of online criticism for her remarks on the Holocaust. On Monday evening, she released an apology on Twitter, writing, "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." 

Goldberg continued, "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."

Goldberg then gave her "sincerest apologies," concluding her statement, "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."

The 66-year-old talk show host also appeared on Monday's episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and discussed what led her to make such comments on The View. 

"I feel, being Black, when we talk about race it's a very different thing to me... People got very, very, very angry and still are angry. I'm getting all the mail from folks, and very real anger because people feel very differently," she told Colbert. "As a Black person, I think of race as something people can see. So I see you and what race you are."

Goldberg added, "People were very angry and they said, 'No, no, we are a race,' and I understand. I felt differently. I respect everything everyone is saying to me and I don't want to fake apologize. I'm very upset that people misunderstood what I was saying. Because of it, they're saying I'm anti-Semitic and I'm denying the Holocaust and all these other things, which would never occur to me to do." 

Colbert, who noted that he is neither Black nor Jewish, said that "whiteness is a construct created by colonial powers," and added that the "American experience" of race "tends to be based on skin." 

"Yes, and so that is what race means to me," Goldberg said. 

Of the upset caused, Goldberg told Colbert, "I'm incredibly torn up by being told these things about myself. I get it, folks are angry, I accept that. And I did it to myself. This was my thought process, and I will work hard not to think that way again."

She also asked that those writing to her regarding her remarks stop. 

"Don't write me anymore, I know how you feel," she said. "I already know. I get it. And I'm going to take your word for it and never bring it up again."

Goldberg has previously said that she identifies as Jewish. At a 2016 charity event in London, she said, "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."

She did not discuss her religious beliefs during the panel's discussion or in her subsequent apologies. 

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