Whoopi Goldberg has been criticised for saying that the Holocaust “isn’t about race”.

On today’s (31 January) episode of The View, Goldberg and her co-hosts Joy Behar, Sara Haines and Ana Navarro were discussing a Tennessee school board choosing to ban Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, in which around 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany.

After talking about the graphic novel, Goldberg said: “Let’s be truthful about it because the Holocaust isn’t about race. No. It’s not about race!”

Behar then told her that Jews in Nazi Germany were considered “a different race” but Goldberg insisted that the Holocaust was about “man’s inhumanity to man”.

Navarro then said it was “about white supremacy” while Haines added that the Nazi government “didn’t see them [Jews] as white”.

Goldberg then continued by saying: “But you’re missing the point! You’re missing the point. The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. That’s the problem.”

The Sister Act star went on: “It doesn’t matter if you are Black or white because Black, white, Jews, Italians, everybody eats each other. So is it—if you are uncomfortable if you hear about Maus, should you be worried—should your child say, ‘Oh my God, I wonder if that’s me?’ No. That’s not what they’re going to say. They’re going to say, ‘I don’t want to be like that.’”

As the episode then went to a commercial, Goldberg repeated: “To learn about man’s inhumanity to man, however it exposes itself.”

Goldberg was also criticised by viewers of the show on social media. One tweeted: “Some Holocaust education would do Whoopi a world of good.”

Another also wrote: “Whoopi’s ignorance is scary.”

The Holocaust is widely defined as the state-sanction extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany across Europe during the Second World War. It is estimated that around six million Jews were killed, as well as millions of others including foreigners, disabled people and homosexuals.