Four degrees of separation from Kristallnacht

If, like me, you were around in the 1990s, you probably remember a play that was later turned into a film starring Will Smith called Six Degrees of Separation.

In the movie, Smith is a young con artist who inveigles his way into a group of well-to-do waspish New Yorkers by convincing them he’s roommates with one of their offspring at Harvard and, furthermore, that he’s the son of legendary African-American actor Sidney Poitier.

The film’s title comes from a sociological theory that everybody in the world can be connected to everyone else in the world by no more than six social steps. For example, you’re a friend of someone, who’s the cousin of someone, who’s a colleague of someone, who’s a friend of someone, who went to school with the daughter of the person you’re talking about.

Next week, we mark the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the state-orchestrated pogrom of 9-10 November 1938 across Germany and Austria that left thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues smashed up and burnt to the ground. The violence also saw more than 90 Jews killed, while another 30,000 were arrested and taken to concentration camps.

Given the nature of our community, I’m fairly certain that most of us could easily connect to someone who experienced Kristallnacht as a victim or at the very least a witness within six steps. Fewer though could claim to have six degrees of separation from one Kristallnacht’s organisers.