First of a six-part series of personal reflections on a day from the past, raising issues from history which have become issues of the present.

7 November 1938. Chosen by Steven Berkoff. On this day, a Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan, bought a gun and shot a German diplomat in Paris. His act of passion led to the outrage of Kristallnacht, and hence to the Holocaust. For actor and writer Steven Berkoff, Grynszpan's naive heroism is the most characteristically Jewish act of modern times, and also the most disastrous. In it lies the perennial Jewish dilemma.