US actress and talk show host Whoopi Goldberg has offered her “sincerest apologies” after saying the Holocaust “isn’t about race”.
The View presenter said Jewish people around the world have “always had my support” in a statement following a backlash to her remarks online.
Goldberg, who co-hosts The View on ABC, said the historic atrocity was about “man’s inhumanity to man”.
She made the comments on the show during a discussion about a Tennessee school board’s decision to ban Pulitzer prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel Maus.
In a statement posted on Twitter she said: “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. As Jonathan Greenblatt from of 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. The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never (waver).
"I am sorry for the hurt I have caused. Written with my sincerest apologies. Whoopi Goldberg.”
In the original discussion, Goldberg said: “Let’s be truthful, the Holocaust isn’t about race, it’s not. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man, that’s what it’s about. These are two groups of white people.”
She continued: “You’re missing the point… let’s talk about it for what it really is. It’s about how people treat each other.
“It’s a problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, Jews… everybody eats each other.”
Her comments were condemned by activists online as “dangerous” following the show’s broadcast.
Responding to her comments Mr Greenblatt, the ADL’s chief executive, said: “No Whoopi Goldberg…(the Nazis) dehumanized them and used this racist propaganda to justify slaughtering 6 million Jews. Holocaust distortion is dangerous.”
StopAntisemitism.org said Goldberg’s comments had “minimised” the trauma and suffering caused by the atrocity.
“Newsflash @WhoopiGoldberg 6 million of us were gassed, starved and massacred because we were deemed an inferior race by the Nazis,” the organisation wrote. “How dare you minimize our trauma and suffering!”
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