Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended from ABC’s The View talk show for asserting on Monday that the Holocaust was “not about race”, the US network’s news division president said on Tuesday, addressing a furore over the comments.
Goldberg, 66, apologised for her remarks later on Monday during an appearance on The Late Show and again on the next broadcast of The View on Tuesday morning.
“Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments,” Kim Godwin, president of ABC News, said on Twitter.
“While Whoopi has apologised, I’ve asked her to take time and reflect and learn about the impact of her comments,” Godwin said. “The entire ABC News organisation stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.”
Goldberg and her 'The View' co-hosts were discussing the Holocaust after a local school board in Tennessee voted to remove the graphic novel 'Maus' from its eighth-grade language arts curriculum. School officials cited profanity and nudity in the Pulitzer Prize-winning work.
Goldberg and her The View co-hosts were discussing the Holocaust after a local school board in Tennessee voted to remove the graphic novel Maus, by Art Spiegelman, from its eighth-grade language arts curriculum. School officials cited profanity and nudity in the Pulitzer Prize-winning work.
“This is white people doing it to white people, so y’all going to fight amongst yourselves,” Goldberg said at one point.
Jewish groups and others were infuriated by her assertions, which they said contradicted the fact that the Nazis killed some 6-million Jews during World War 2 based on an anti-Semitic ideology fomented by Adolf Hitler that they were an inferior race.
“No Whoopi Goldberg, the Holocaust was about the Nazis’ systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, tweeted in response to the comments.
“They dehumanised them and used this racist propaganda to justify slaughtering 6-million Jews. Holocaust distortion is dangerous”, he said.
— Reuters
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