Whoopi Goldberg faces backlash after more Holocaust comments
Whoopi Goldberg has come under fire after stating that the Holocaust “wasn’t originally” about race in an interview with the U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times.
This controversy marks the second time that Goldberg, 67, has faced backlash for Holocaust-related comments, after she stated in January of this year that the Holocaust was “not about race.”
Goldberg’s latest statement was published on Saturday, after a reporter for The Sunday Times stated that “Nazis saw Jews as a race,” in reference to Goldberg’s comments from earlier this year.
“Yes, but that’s the killer isn’t it?” Goldberg responded. “The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?”
“It wasn’t originally [about race],” she added. “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 reporter then told Goldberg that “the Nazis measured the heads and noses of Jews to ‘prove’ they were a distinct race.”
Goldberg responded, “They did that to Black people too. 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.”
Jewish leaders and Holocaust experts respond
Following the publication of Goldberg’s comments, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum tweeted a passage from a letter that Adolf Hitler wrote in 1919 – fourteen years before he became chancellor of Germany and opened the first concentration camp. Int he letter, Hitler states that “Jews are definitely a race” and referring to them as an “alien race, unable and unwilling to sacrifice its racial distinctiveness.”
Excerpt from Adolf Hitler’s letter on ‘the dangers currently presented by Jewry to our nation’ from 16 September 1919.
This text is one of the first major statements made by Hitler with regard to the Jewish question. pic.twitter.com/t56oHRWm2w
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) December 26, 2022
Other Jewish leaders then took the initiative to use the Auschwitz Memorial’s tweet to fire back at Goldberg’s comments and correct the inaccuracy of Goldberg’s statements.
To #WhoopiGoldberg:
Take a moment to read this quote from Hitler. He says: “Firstly, Jews are definitely a race…”
In fact, he uses the word “race” 3x in just a few sentences.
Stop claiming the Holocaust wasn’t about race. It was all about race.
Please get a grip & move on. https://t.co/sYeUZz07Ak
— David Harris (@DavidHarrisNY) December 27, 2022
Whoopi Goldberg continues to use the Holocaust as her punching bag.
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. pic.twitter.com/wgAHGsBPPU
— Lucy Lipiner (@LucyLipiner) December 25, 2022
Goldberg was previously suspended by ABC News for two weeks following her earlier comments made on “The View” in January. President Kim Godwin called the comments “wrong and hurtful,” and Goldberg also apologized for her comments.
