A Holocaust survivor has lashed out at Whoopi Goldberg after she doubled down on her controversial views about the Holocaust not being about race which she made earlier this year.
“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’,” said Ms Goldberg in an interview with The Times.
Ms Goldberg, who was promoting her new movie Till added that” “It wasn’t originally” about race saying that the Nazis also killed people they believed to be “mentally defective”.
When she was pressed on by interviewer Janice Turner that the Nazis considered Jews a race, Ms Goldberg said it was wrong to use their definition.
“The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?”
In a statement on Twitter, holocaust survivor Lucy Lipiner hit out at the “comedy has-been”.
“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.”
Ms Goldberg was suspended by ABC earlier this year after suggesting the Holocaust “was not about race”.
Appearing on The View, Ms Goldberg had said: “Let’s be truthful about it because the Holocaust isn’t about race. No. It’s not about race!”
“But you’re missing the point! You’re missing the point,” she insisted, adding, “The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. That’s the problem.”
She had doubled down on her comments in an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert that same day.
“I thought it was a salient discussion because as a Black person I think of race as being something that I can see. People were very angry and they said ‘no no we are a race – and I understand,” she told Colbert.
She had subsequently issued an apology after backlash from survivors and other groups.
