Whoopi Goldberg Piovanotto Marco/ABACA/Shutterstock
Revisiting her scandal. Whoopi Goldberg issued an apology after seemingly doubling down on past controversial statements about the Holocaust.
During an interview with The Sunday Times, which was posted on Saturday, December 24, Goldberg, 67, admitted she doesn’t understand why her stance that the Holocaust was not “about race” received major backlash.
“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,’” the View cohost claimed while standing by her original position. “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 actress noted that she still didn’t understand the outrage around her comments. “It doesn’t change the fact that you could not tell a Jew on a street,” she stated. “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.”
Shortly after Goldberg’s stance once again made headlines, she broke her silence with a statement.
“Recently while doing press in London, I was asked about my comments from earlier this year. I tried to convey to the reporter what I had said and why, and attempted to recount that time,” she told E! News on Tuesday, December 27. “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.”
Whoopi Goldberg on ‘The View.’ ABC/Jenny Anderson
The Sister Act star continued: “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.”
Earlier this year, Goldberg was suspended from The View for two weeks after arguing with cohost Joy Behar that the Holocaust was “about man’s inhumanity to man.” After the January episode received backlash, the New York native walked back her original point of view.
“I said something that I feel a responsibility for not leaving unexamined because my words upset so many people, which was never my intention,” she said on the talk show at the time. “And I understand why now, and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and it helped me understand some different things.”