- The hosts of "The View" discussed recent
book bans , including "Maus ," a book about theHolocaust . Whoopi Goldberg argued that the Holocaust is "not about race."
Whoopi Goldberg apologized for saying that the Holocaust — which resulted in the mass murder of six million Jews — wasn't "about race" during a Monday episode of "The View."
Monday's episode of the view discussed efforts to ban books across the country — including the ban of Art Spiegelman's book "Maus," a graphic novel about the Holocaust, in a Tennessee school district.
"Maus," a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, uses the phrase "God damn" and an illustration of a nude mouse, which is what the McMinn County school board cited as concerns before banning the book for the eighth-grade curriculum earlier this month.
The hosts discussed efforts to ban books like "Maus" as a hindrance to kids before they enter "the real world."
"I'm surprised that's what made you uncomfortable, the fact that there was some nudity," Goldberg said to her co-hosts. "I mean, it's about the Holocaust, the killing of six million people, but that didn't bother you?"
"I am not sure they don't use the naked part as kind of a canard to throw you off from the fact that history that makes white people look bad," co-host Joy Behar said.
"Maybe," Goldberg added. "Well, this is white people doing it to white people. Y'all go fight amongst yourselves."
"If you're going to do this, let's be truthful about it because the Holocaust isn't about race," Goldberg continued. "No. It's not about race! It's about man's inhumanity to man. That's what it's about."
Her co-host Ana Navarro disagreed: "But it's about white supremacy."
"It's about going after Jews and Gypsies," Navarro added.
Goldberg argued that the Holocaust is about "how people treat each other."
Goldberg released a statement Monday evening apologizing for her statements on the show.
"On today's show, I said the Holocaust 'is not about race, but about man's inhumanity to man.' I should have said it is about both," Goldberg wrote in her statement. "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," Goldberg also said.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Adolf Hitler's particular feelings about race or people were a defining part of Nazi ideology and the decision to systematically exterminate Jews and others he believed were unfit, including Roma, people with disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, Afro-Germans, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents, and others.
"The Nazis defined Jews as a 'race,'" per the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Regarding the Jewish religion as irrelevant, the Nazis attributed a wide variety of negative stereotypes about Jews and 'Jewish' behavior to an unchanging biologically determined heritage that drove the 'Jewish race,' like other races, to struggle to survive by expansion at the expense of other races."
—Whoopi Goldberg (@WhoopiGoldberg) February 1, 2022