What Did Whoopi Goldberg Say About Holocaust? Host Doubles Down

Whoopi Goldberg found herself at the center of a new uproar after restating controversial opinions about the Holocast that got her briefly banned from The View earlier in 2022.

In a new interview published by The Sunday Times, the Oscar-winning actress maintained that the Holocaust "wasn't originally" about race to the Nazis. She has since issued a statement apologizing for her latest comments and has stated that she does believe the Holocaust "was about race."

Goldberg, whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson, first made her comments about Jewish people and the Holocaust in January 2022. She was accused of being antisemitic on The View, and was later asked about her own views on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She later issued two apologies on Twitter for her comments, but she was suspended from the daytime talkshow The View for two weeks.

At the time Goldberg said the Holocaust wasn't about race but "about man's inhumanity to man." She also said "This is white people doing it to white people, so y'all going to fight amongst yourselves."

Now, as she promotes the upcoming drama movie Till, an emotional biopic about the death of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman, she spoke openly about her previous comments.

The interviewer for The Sunday Times notes how many references Goldberg makes to Jewish people before the topic is raised. They start to discuss whether to be Jewish is a race or a religion.

"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,'" Goldberg said. The interviewer points out that Nazis saw Jewish people as a race in the Holocaust.

"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?"

Goldberg was then asked by the interviewer, since the Nazis devised racial laws aimed specifically at Jews, wasn't the Holocaust about race?

"It wasn't originally," Goldberg 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."

The report then notes that Goldberg pondered if when a Jew loses their faith, they are still part of the Jewish race.

The Sunday Times report noted that the Nazis measured the heads and noses of Jews to "prove" they were a distinct race. "They did that to black people too," Goldberg said. "But 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."

Once again, Goldberg faced a backlash from the Jewish community over her comments. The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, slammed Goldberg's latest comments on Twitter.

"Yet again, [Whoopi Goldberg's] comments about the Holocaust and race are deeply offensive and incredibly ignorant," he wrote in a multi-tweet thread. "Whoopi's comments show a complete lack of awareness of the multi-ethnic, multiracial makeup of the Jewish community. She needs to apologize immediately and actually commit to educating herself on the true nature of antisemitism."

Newsweek reached out to Goldberg's representatives for comment, but she has since apologized with a statement sent out on Tuesday.

Discussing her recent interview with The Sunday Times in London, Goldberg said she did in fact believe the Holocaust "was about race."

"I tried to convey to the reporter what I had said and why, and attempted to recount that time." Goldberg continued, "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. 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. 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."