“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg claimed the Nazis had “issues with ethnicity, not with race” on a Monday episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
Goldberg addressed her earlier claims that the “Holocaust isn’t about race” during a Monday episode of “The View.” When Colbert pressed Goldberg on Jews being classified as a race under Nazi rule, Goldberg said the Nazis “lied” about discriminating on the basis of race, but rather had “issues with ethnicity.”
“Have you come to understand that the Nazis saw it as race? Asking the Nazis, they would say ‘yes, it’s a racial issue,” Colbert asked.
“Well, this is what’s interesting to me, because the Nazis lied,” Goldberg replied. “It wasn’t. They had issues with ethnicity, not with race, because most of the Nazis were white people and most of the people they were attacking were white people. So to me, I’m thinking how can you say it’s about race if you are fighting each other?”
“I said, this wasn’t racial. This was about ‘white-on-white,'” she continued.
In his writings, Adolf Hitler consistently classified the Jews as a race, The Times of Israel reported. The Auschwitz Memorial tweeted historical documentation of Nazis identifying those with four German grandparents as “racially pure” and individuals with Jewish heritage as either Jews or “mixed-blooded.”
Goldberg said her remarks are connected to her self-definition of race being connected to skin color and as “something I can see,” then pointed out that the Nazis could not visually identify a Jewish person.
“When you talk about being a racist, I was saying you can’t call this racism, this was evil,” she said. “This wasn’t based on skin, you couldn’t tell who was Jewish. They had to delve deeply to figure it out…”But I thought it was an assailant discussion because as a black person I think of race as something that I can see, so I see you and I know what race you are.”
“And the discussion was about how I felt about that, I felt that it was really more about man’s inhumanity to man and how horrible people can be to people and we’re seeing it manifest itself these days.”
Goldberg said she does not want to “fake apologize” to those offended and “accepts” that her remarks angered many people. She added that she caused the backlash herself and vowed to never discuss the matter again. (RELATED: Whoopi Goldberg Apologizes For Saying ‘Holocaust Isn’t About Race’ On ‘The View’)
“People were very angry and said ‘no, no, we are a race.’ And I understand, I understand. I respect everything people are saying to me and I don’t want to fake apologize. I was very upset that people misunderstood what I was saying because of it they’re saying that I’m antisemitic and I’m denying the Holocaust and all of these things that would never occur to me to do.”
Goldberg apologized for her remarks after the show’s pre-taping, vowing that the Jewish people have her support.
“On today’s show, I said the Holocaust ‘is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man,'” Goldberg said via Twitter. “I should have said it is about both. As Jonathon Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, ‘The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systemic 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 waiver,” she continued. “I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused. Written with my sincerest apologies.”