'The View' host Whoopi Goldberg returns from suspension over Holocaust remarks: 'Honor to sit at this table'

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Whoopi Goldberg returns to 'The View,' addresses suspension

Whoopi Goldberg avoided mentioning the Holocaust while discussing her suspension and return to the show.

"The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg returned from her suspension on Monday after her controversial remarks about the Holocaust.

"Yes, I am back," Goldberg said, after missing the past eight episodes starting Feb. 2. "I missed you all, too."

Goldberg was suspended for two weeks on Feb. 1 by ABC News after saying the Holocaust wasn't about race but rather different groups of "White" people.

"I've got to tell you, there’s something kind of marvelous about being on a show like this, because we are ‘The View,’ and this is what we do," she said on Monday. "And sometimes we don’t do it as elegantly as we could … but it’s five minutes to get in important information about topics. And that’s what we try to do every day, and I want to thank everybody who reached out while I was away, and I’m telling you, people reached out from places that made me go, wait, wait, what, really?"

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Goldberg didn't go into specifics but said she hoped important conversations continued even if they weren't "always pretty."

"It is an honor to sit at this table and be able to have these conversations because they’re important. They’re important to us as a nation, and to us more so as a human entity," she said, before leading a discussion of the Super Bowl.

Goldberg went viral on Jan. 31 when she argued that the Holocaust "isn't about race," stunning her colleagues at the table. 

"What is it about?" co-host Joy Behar asked. 

"It’s about man’s inhumanity to man, that’s what it’s about," Goldberg said.  

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"But it’s about a White supremacist going after Jews and Gypsies," guest co-host Ana Navarro said as Goldberg attempted to speak over her. 

"But these are two White groups of people," Goldberg said as her colleagues disagreed. 

After criticism continued to erupt for Goldberg's dismissal of race, she apologized but also continued to defend her stance during an interview that night on "The Late Show" with host Stephen Colbert. She said she didn't want to give a "fake" apology but reiterated she viewed race differently as a Black woman.

"I think of race as being something that I can see," she said. "So, I see you and I know what race you are."

The next day, "The View" had on Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who explained why Goldberg's position offended Jews and others.

"Well, Whoopi, there’s no question that the Holocaust was about race. That’s how the Nazis saw it as they perpetrated the systematic annihilation of the Jewish people across continents, across countries with deliberate and ruthless cruelty," Greenblatt said. "You see, Hitler’s ideology, the Third Reich, was predicated on the idea that the Aryans, the Germans, were a ‘master race,’ and the Jews were a subhuman race. It was racialized antisemitism."

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Goldberg was suspended that evening by ABC, drawing criticism from the left and right, with some viewing it as a pointless punishment and others saying that it wasn't as severe a reprimand ABC had dealt to others for controversial remarks.