Whoopi Goldberg speaks during the WorldPride 2019 Opening Ceremony, a combined celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots and WorldPride 2019 in New York, U.S., June 26, 2019. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Actress Whoopi Goldberg has once again stated that the Holocaust was not related to race less than a year after she was suspended from ABC’s daytime talk show The View for making similar remarks.

The 67-year-old, who was born Caryn Elaine Johnson and has no Jewish ancestry, said in an interview with the British publication The Times on Saturday that the Nazi-orchestrated genocide of 6 million Jews led by Adolf Hitler was “white on white” violence, and that Jews were not targeted because of their 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,” said the Oscar-nominated actress, who plays the mother of civil rights activist Mamie Till-Mobley in the new film Till. 

Commenting on her Jewish-sounding stage name, Goldberg said in 2011 that she personally identifies with Judaism and feels Jewish. She told The Times on Saturday that her stage name comes from a “distant Jewish ancestor.” She added, “My best friend said, ‘Not for nothing is there no box on the census for the Jewish race. So that leads me to believe that we’re probably not a race.'”

When the interviewer, Janice Turner, pushed back by telling Goldberg, “Nazis saw Jews as a race,” the actress responded: “Yes, but that’s the killer, isn’t it? The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?”

Turner asked, “But since the Nazis devised racial laws aimed specifically at Jews, wasn’t the Holocaust about race?” and the actress responded, saying, “It wasn’t originally.”

Goldberg added, “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,” referring to her controversial comments on The View.

She also suggested that while the Nazis additionally targeted people of African descent because they were different physically, Jews had an easier time blending in with White people and hiding from the Nazis than Black people.

Goldberg was suspended for two weeks from The View in January when she said on-air that the Holocaust “was not about race,” but rather about “man’s inhumanity to man,” during a discussion with her co-hosts. She said, “If you’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it,” before trying to explain that “these [Jews and Nazis] are two white groups of people.” After being criticized for her remarks, Goldberg apologized on social media and on the next day’s episode of The View.

Her latest comments on Saturday have again received backlash including from Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who wrote on Twitter, “Antisemitism is anti-Jewish racism. Period. Claiming the Holocaust had nothing to do with racism is historical revisionism at its worst.”

International Legal Forum CEO Arsen Ostrovsky similarly tweeted about Goldberg’s incendiary remarks, “So, after supposed ‘apology’ earlier in year, Whoopi Goldberg doubles down on her vile remarks that the Holocaust was not about race, and instead ‘white on white’ violence. Someone get this ignorant fool off the air!”

Ari Ingel, director of the entertainment industry non-profit organization Creative Community for Peace, said, “Antisemitism deeply ingrained in Whoopi Goldberg. She learned nothing.”