Whoopi Goldberg Apologizes After Appearing To Double Down On Holocaust Remarks

Whoopi Goldberg is apologizing again after appearing to double down on the controversial comments she made about the Holocaust earlier this year.

Goldberg recently came under fire for repeating her remarks that the Holocaust wasn't about race in an interview with the British newspaper The Sunday Times.

In response to the backlash, the Oscar winner released a new statement explaining that she was only trying to convey why she made the original comment and recount what she was thinking at the time.

"Recently, while doing press in London, I was asked about my comments from earlier this year," Goldberg said in a statement provided to Entertainment Weekly. "I tried to convey to the reporter what I had said and why, and attempted to recount that time. It was never my intention to appear as if I was doubling down on hurtful comments, especially after talking with and hearing people like rabbis and old and new friends weighing in. I'm still learning a lot and believe me, I heard everything everyone said to me."

She added, "I believe that the Holocaust was about race, and I am still as sorry now as I was then that I upset, hurt and angered people. My sincere apologies again, especially to everyone who thought this was a fresh rehash of the subject. I promise it was not."

Goldberg first sparked controversy in the Jan. 31 episode of "The View," where she and her co-hosts discussed the banning of "Maus" — the Pulitzer-winning novel about the Holocaust — by a Tennessee school board.

At one point, the "Sister Act" star said that the Holocaust was "not about race" but rather "about man's inhumanity to man." She said that at first there were white people fighting among themselves.

"If you're going to do this, let's be truthful about it, because the Holocaust isn't about race. It's not about race," she said at the time.

Hours after the broadcast, Goldberg issued an apology saying she "should have said it is about both." She was subsequently taken off the air for two weeks.

"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," she wrote on Twitter at the time, EW noted. "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."

She added, "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 signed the note as "Written with my sincerest apologies."

But in a recent interview with The Times, Goldberg seemingly doubled down on her original take about the Holocaust and why she believed it wasn't about race.

"Remember who they were killing first. They were not killing racial; they were killing physical. They were killing people they considered to be mentally defective. And then they made this decision," she said.

When told by the reporter that "the Nazis measured the heads and noses of Jews to 'prove' they were a distinct race," the TV personality replied: "They did that to Black people too. But it doesn't change the fact that you could not tell a Jew on a street. You could find me. You couldn't find them. That was the point I was making. But you would have thought that I'd taken a big old stinky dump on the table, butt naked."

When Goldberg was asked about Nazis classifying Jews as a race, she argued that it was "the oppressor ... telling you what you are."

"Why are you believing them? They're Nazis. Why believe what they're saying?" she added.

According to U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Nazis defined Jews as a race and mass murdered millions of Jewish people to purge them because they considered them "parasitic vermin" worthy only of eradication.