Whoopi Goldberg, the comedian and actress who also co-hosts the ABC talk show “The View,” repeatedly said on an episode of the show that aired Monday that the Holocaust was not about race, comments coming at the same time from rising anti-Semitism worldwide. She later apologized.
In the episode, Ms. Goldberg said the Holocaust was about “the inhumanity of man to man” and “not about race.” When one of her co-hosts questioned that claim, saying that the Holocaust was driven by white supremacy, Ms. Goldberg said, “But these are two white groups of people.”
She added: “These are white people doing it to white people, so you’re going to fight amongst yourselves.” As she continued to speak, music played, indicating a commercial break.
During World War II, under a policy of mass extermination, the Nazis murdered six million Jews — about a third of the world’s Jewish population at the time — because they were an inferior race.
After her comments sparked much criticism, Ms. Goldberg apologized. “The Jewish people around the world have always had my support,” she said in a statement posted Monday night. “I’m sorry for the pain I caused.”
In an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” on Monday, Ms. Goldberg explained that as a black woman, she thinks racism is based on skin color, but realized that not everyone sees it that way. “I understand. People are angry,” she says. “I accept that, and I did it to myself.”
Jewish groups said Ms Goldberg’s comments were dangerous and the latest example of growing ignorance about the Nazi genocide. The director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, wrote on Twitter of the Nazis: “They dehumanized them and used this racist propaganda to justify the slaughter of 6 million Jews,” he said. “Holocaust distortion is dangerous.”
Meghan McCain, former co-host of “The View,” said on Twitter Monday that anti-Semitism was “a poison increasingly excused in our culture and television — permeating spaces that should shock us all.”
According to a 2014 report by the Anti-Defamation League, more than a billion people worldwide hold anti-Semitic views. More than a third of people in the 102 countries surveyed had never heard of the Holocaust, the report found.
According to research by the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish communities around the world have indicated an increase in annual anti-Semitic incidents. That sentiment has been pronounced in Europe, where 89 percent of Jews felt that anti-Semitism in their country had increased between 2013 and 2018, according to a 2018 European Union survey of about 16,500 Jews. The survey also found that 40 percent of European Jews were concerned about being physically attacked, and in 12 EU countries where Jews have lived for centuries, more than a third said they considered emigrating because they no longer felt safe. as Jews.
Last month, the United Nations passed a resolution condemning the denial and distortion of the Holocaust. Ms. Goldberg’s comments also came weeks after a gunman held several people hostage for 11 hours at a Texas synagogue.
David Baddiel, a British comedian and the author of the book “Jews Don’t Count,” said in an interview that anti-Semitism has very little to do with religion itself — descendants of Jewish people who converted to Christianity were also killed. during the Holocaust because they were seen as members of the Jewish race.
“If you are a race, an ethnicity, like the Jews are, who have been persecuted for many, many centuries, mainly because that happens to be who you are, happens to be who your parents are, happens to be who your ancestors are, then that is racism,” said Mr Baddiel.
“There is no other word for it.”