"While Whoopi has apologised, I've asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organisation stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities," ABC News President Kim Godwin said in a statement.

"Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments," Godwin said in her statement.

Goldberg made her original comments during a discussion on the show about a Tennessee school's banning of "Maus," a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Nazi death camps during World War II. She said the Holocaust was "not about race ... it's about man's inhumanity to other man."

Goldberg apologised hours later and again on Tuesday's morning episode, but the original remark drew condemnation from several prominent Jewish leaders.

"My words upset so many people, which was never my intention," she said Tuesday morning. "I understand why now and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and helped me understand some different things."

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, praised Goldberg for being outspoken over the years on social issues but said he struggled to understand her statement on the Holocaust.

"The only explanation that I have for it is that there is a new definition of racism that has been put out there in the public recently that defines racism exclusively as the targeting of people of colour. And obviously history teaches us otherwise," Cooper said.

"Everything about Nazi Germany and about the targeting of the Jews and about the Holocaust was about race and racism. That's the unfortunate, unassailable historic fact," he said.

Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Centre for Human Rights Under Law, linked Goldberg's remarks to broader misconceptions of the Holocaust, Jewish identity and antisemitism.

"In her error, she was reflecting a misunderstanding of Jewish identity that is both widespread and dangerous that is sometimes described as erasive antisemitism," said Marcus, who is the author of 'The Definition of Anti-Semitism.'

"It is the notion that Jews should be viewed only as being white, privileged oppressors," he said. "It denies Jewish identity and involves a whitewashing of Jewish history."

The US Holocaust Museum in Washington responded to Goldberg with a tweet.

"Racism was central to Nazi ideology. Jews were not defined by religion, but by race. Nazi racist beliefs fuelled genocide and mass murder," it said.

Australian Associated Press