Another Holocaust gaffe and Whoopi Goldberg is forced to apologize.
In an interview with the 'Sunday Times' the Oscar-winning actress for 'Ghost' said that the extermination of millions of people under the Nazi regime was "not originally a question of race".
It is the second time this year that the 67-year-old Goldberg has angered Jewish organizations and criticized historians with erroneous and offensive comments about the mass slaughter of six million European Jews before and during World War II.
Also in January, the comedian said that the Holocaust was not a matter of race but a matter "among whites".
"Remember who they killed first. They didn't kill because of race, but people they considered mentally defective. Then they made that decision", Goldberg returned to the office with the British Sunday who had interviewed her in view of the release of the new movie 'Till'.
And to the journalist who objected that "the Nazis measured the heads and noses of Jews to demonstrate that they were of a distinct race", the African-American actress replied that "they also did it with blacks. But this does not change the fact that you can't spot a Jew on the street. You can spot me, but not them. That's what I meant."
It's been just hours since the interview was published and Whoopi was forced to make a mea culpa: "I never wanted to be thought of as making offensive comments double, especially after talking to rabbis and old friends who made me understand," she said the first woman and first person of color to host the Oscars, admitting that she "still has a lot to learn" but noting that "her support for the Jewish community has never wavered and never will."
After the January gaffe, ABC suspended Goldberg for two weeks from the panel of 'The View', a popular morning program and even then the actress apologized within hours.
Whoopi is not the only celebrity who in recent months has ended up in the pillory for unhistorical and anti-Semitic statements: among them the rapper and former fashion impresario Kanye West and the star of the Brooklyn Nets, Kyrie Irving.
'Till', the actress's next film, tells the story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who was kidnapped and killed in 1955 by two white men in Mississippi.
Goldberg, who is also a producer, plays Alma Carthan, the grandmother of the murdered teenager.