Actress Whoopi Goldberg has issued an apology ‘for the hurt caused’ after saying the Holocaust ‘wasn’t about race’ on Monday’s (31 January) episode of The View.

Appearing alongside her hosts Joy Behar, Sara Haines, and Ana Navarro, Whoopi Goldberg was discussing a Tennessee school board choosing to ban Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, in which around 6 million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany.

Maus depicts Jews as mice and Nazis as cats and has won numerous literary awards. The school board said they opted to pull the book from shelves as it features profanity, nudity and depiction of suicide that they deemed to be inappropriate for 13 year olds.

Commenting on this, 66-year-old Whoopi said; 

‘Let’s be truthful about it because Holocaust isn’t about race. It’s not about race. It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man. 

‘These are two white groups of people! The minute you turn it into race it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white, Jews, it’s each other.’ 

However following the backlash that ensued as many pointed out that Hitler’s hatred of Jewish people was racial and that the Nazis considered themselves to be an Aryan ‘master race’ and murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust, Whoopi has now apologized. 

She said; 

 ‘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 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. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused.’ 

‘Written with my sincerest apologies, Whoopi Goldberg.’