Comedian and “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg apologized for comments she made on Monday morning in which she said that the Holocaust was “not about race.”

“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 said in a statement.

“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.”

“The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver [sic]. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused.”

“Written with my sincerest apologies, Whoopi Goldberg,”

In a late-night comedy show on Monday night, Goldberg attempted to explain her mistake.

“It upset a lot of people which was never, ever, ever, ever my intention,” she told comedian Stephen Colbert. “I thought it was a salient discussion because as a black person, I think of race as being something that I can see. People were very angry and they said ‘No, no, we are a race’ – and I understand.”

“People, you know, decided I was all these other things I’m actually not. I’m incredibly torn up by being told these things about myself. And I get it, folks are angry. I accept that and I did it to myself,” she added. “This was my first thought process and I’ll work hard not to think that way again.”

Greenblatt thanked Goldberg late Monday night.

“Thanks @WhoopiGoldberg for correcting your prior statement and acknowledging the #Holocaust for what it was. As #antisemitism surges to historic levels, I hope we can work together to combat ignorance of that horrific crime and the hate that threatens all,” he tweeted.

Goldberg’s “apology and clarification are important,” said Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan, who invited her to the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem to “learn more about the causes, events and aftermath of the Holocaust.” His statement said Goldberg’s comments on the show indicated “a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Holocaust & antisemitism.”

“We must not mince words; people need to know what led to the Holocaust, the unprecedented murderous drive to annihilate the entire Jewish people their religion, culture and values by the Nazis and their collaborators, primarily because of the unfounded belief that Jews were their foremost and extremely dangerous racial enemy,” Dayan said.

“I get what she was trying to say,” said Jill Savitt, the president and CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, who earlier ran the Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “The Nazis created a construct about race to claim that some people were lesser humans.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC / AP)