Shirley MacLaine shares some controversial views on the Holocaust

When we think of Shirley MacLaine, we think her long career in film and television. But she’s back in the headlines for something else and it’s a bit surprising. In her new memoir, she suggests that Holocaust victims may have been asking for it.

Although MacLaine’s What If... was first published in 2013, her comments on the Holocaust were just printed last week in The Daily Mail. In the passage, MacLaine suggests that victims of the Holocaust were killed to balance “karma” for past crimes.

“What if most Holocaust victims were balancing their karma from ages before, when they were Roman soldiers putting Christians to death, the Crusaders who murdered millions in the name of Christianity, soldiers with Hannibal, or those who stormed across the Near East with Alexander?” the Oscar-winner, 80, wrote. “The energy of killing is endless and will be experienced by the killer and the killee.”

A spokesman for the Community Security Trust, which fights anti-Semitism, told the Mail, “‘The first impressions are that these comments will offend and bemuse many Jews – and many other people too.”

Aside from her performances on the big screen, MacLaine is known for some unconventional views and writes about many of them in the book. In another passage, she suggested that Stephen Hawking gave himself ALS to “free his mind” from the usual needs of a body so he could focus only on research.

What If... was first published in November 2013, notes The Hollywood Reporter. The book also includes MacLaine’s version of her American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement award ceremony and her take on Downton Abbey, which she appeared on.

MacLaine won an Oscar for Terms of Endearment. She was recently seen in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and on Glee.

image courtesy of INFphoto.com

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