Actress and talk show host Whoopi Goldberg is in hot water again after being asked her opinions on Jews and the Holocaust. The African-American comedian repeated her belief that Jews are not a stand-alone race, and that the Nazis perpetrated “white on white” violence.
In a recent interview with The Times of London about the movie “Till,” a movie that took her more than a decade to bring to the big screen, the first Black woman to become an EGOT spoke candidly about her earlier remarks about the atrocities committed against Jewish people during the World War II.
At the time of the first statements on her daytime show “The View,” she said the Holocaust was a demonstration of “man’s inhumanity to man.” She was suspended for those remarks.
At the time, Goldberg released a statement on her Twitter to address her comments and to share what she learned as a result of her remarks.
“On today’s show,” she began, “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 the Anti-Defamation League shared, ‘The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people— who they [the Nazis] deemed to be an inferior race.’ I stand correct,” she wrote before stating “Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused.”
She also interviewed on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and pleaded her case.
“It upset a lot of people, which was never ever, ever my intention,” Goldberg said during the interview. “I feel, being Black when we talk about race, it’s a very different thing to me. So, I said I thought the Holocaust wasn’t about race.”
The live chat with The Times was supposed to be only about the movie, with her publicist telling the publication beforehand not to bring up the subject during the discussion, however, the journalist for the British tabloid ignored those instructions, the Daily Mail reports.
The interviewer said that the Nazis believed the Holocaust was about race and pointed out that the group identified the Jews as a different and lesser race than their “Aryan” race, an unfounded German ideology of racial purity.
Goldberg said, “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?”
She continued to share her belief that the Holocaust “wasn’t originally” about race but about intellectual capacity.
“Remember who they were killing first,” she said. “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.”
According to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, Goldberg’s facts about other people being targeted is accurate.
“The Nazis wanted to ‘improve’ the genetic make-up of the population and so persecuted people deemed to be disabled, either mentally or physically, as well as gay people,” the charitable organization established and funded by the United Kingdom government to promote and support Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) in the U.K. wrote.
It noted there were others singled out, other than Jews, including “Roma and Sinti people (sometimes referred to as ‘Gypsies’) and Black people. Slavic people, such as those from Poland and Russia, were considered inferior and were targeted because they lived in areas needed for German expansion.”
Goldberg in her remarks said being Jewish was not a racial designation, stating unlike most Blacks appearing Black, Jewish people are not identifiable by sight.
“It doesn’t change the fact that you could not tell a Jew on a street,” the 67-year-old talent said. “You could find me. You couldn’t find them. That was the point I was making.”
Goldberg’s film “Till” is about the life of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.
At the age of 14, a young Till visited his great uncle in Mississippi for the summer vacation. The boy was accused of flirting with a white woman, Carolyn Butler, and as a result, was lynched by her husband and his half-brother, as well as other men who were never indicted. The two husband and half-brother were acquitted of his murder but later confessed to it in a magazine.
The film is deemed a critical success, with the cast and crew receiving award nominations and predicted to be included as “Best Picture” at the 95th Annual Academy Awards in 2023.
