Veteran Actor Whoopi Goldberg Suspended From Talk Show Over Holocaust Remarks

Whoopi Goldberg was suspended for a 14-day period this week from a television talk show she hosts over statements she made about the Holocaust. The genocide of Jews in the 1940s under the Nazis "was not about race" but involved "two groups of white people," the 66-year-old acting veteran reportedly said on air.

ABC News, for which Goldberg hosts talk show The View, said it was suspending Goldberg temporarily for her "wrong and hurtful comments." The actor has apologised and has been asked "to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments," according to a staff note written by the news outlet's president, the BBC reports.

"The entire ABC News organisation stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities."

The incident comes just days after the world marked the International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, in memory of the murder of six million Jews in Europe under Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.

Suggested Reading: Belgium Gives People The Right To Disconnect From Work: Can Other Countries Follow?

Goldberg has been with The View since 2007. Her controversial remarks Monday came in the light of a discussion around the ban of graphic novel Maus: A Survivor's Tale, which pictorially depicts the Holocaust. Authored by Art Spiegelman, whose parents survived the extermination camp in Auschwitz, Maus shows Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, and is noted for being the only graphic novel to win a Pulitzer, in 1992.

The board of a school in Tennessee, claiming Maus contained "rough, objectionable language" and was unsuitable to be taught to teens, recently banned the book. The decision sparked a furore, with Spiegelman saying it left his "jaw open" and that the Tennessee school board's behaviour was "Orwellian."

Suggested Reading: Wordle: The New Word Game The Internet Is Obsessing Over Has A Sweet Back Story

During an interaction with her co-hosts on the topic of Maus, Goldberg said the Holocaust was not about race but "about man's inhumanity to other man... these are two white groups of people. The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley."

Jewish speakers and Holocaust experts have widely criticised Goldberg's comments, saying it gives a dangerous and incorrect angle to the annihilation that occurred over Nazis considering Jews to be a "lesser race."

On Twitter, Goldberg apologised in a statement, writing, "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." She also admitted guilt on the Tuesday episode of the talk show.