https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2025/03/rip-marika-sherwood-survivor-of.html
RIP Marika Sherwood, a Survivor of the Hungarian Holocaust, an Anti-Racist Campaigner All Her Life

In 2017 Manchester University Forced Her to Change the Title of a Talk ‘You're doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to me’ after Israel’s Ambassador Mark Regev Lobbied Them

Manchester University thought it a good idea to frame the Palestinian experience of apartheid and genocide as a religious one

Born in Budapest, Marika Sherwood (8 November 1937 – 16 February 2025) was the daughter of Hungarian-Jewish parents, Laszlo (Laci) Fenyő and Magda. Laci survived Hungary’s Jewish Labour Service, but many relatives died in the Holocaust. Magda secured false Christian identity papers for her and Marika, and they survived the Nazi occupation, reuniting with Laci after the war.

Marika survived the Budapest Ghetto that was established under the fascist Arrow Cross government that the Nazis installed in October 1944. Marika, who remembered having to wear a Yellow Star and witnessing many atrocities, later spoke of the impact of these wartime experiences in shaping her very public support of the Palestinian cause.

Marika Sherwood emigrated with her family to Australia in 1948 and then to Britain in 1965. As a teacher in London she witnessed the discrimination that Black students experienced and the absence of Black history from the curriculum.

Marika was shocked by the racism many of her pupils experienced. It was this that led to her becoming interested in learning about their Caribbean heritage.

This led to Marika becoming a pioneer in the field of Black and Caribbean history and the co-founder of the Black & Asian Studies Association with Hakim Adi, Britain’s first Black Professor of History.

Her writings include After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807, Origins of Pan-Africanism: Henry Sylvester Williams and Africa and the African Diaspora.

Marika published 13 books about slavery, colonialism and the history of African and Caribbean people Britain in a long and distinguished career as a teacher, writer, and social campaigner. She was at the forefront of attempts to diversify the curriculum across schools and higher education.

With her BASA colleagues, Marika designed and wrote a GCSE module and textbook on migration to Britain (2016). In 1990 Marika was appointed a research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and began organising history seminars there. Marika’s extensive publications are listed on the ICWS Research website.

Many Struggles: West Indian Workers and Service Personnel in Britain (1939-45), published in 1985 was one of the first publications to highlight “the racism meted out to Black people by the British state” during the second world war, and to demonstrate that those from the Caribbean were an integral part of the war effort. Over the next 40 years she would produce more than 20 books and almost 100 articles.

Her books covered a vast variety of topics. In After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807, she reminded people, during the bicentennial commemoration of the Abolition Act, that Britain’s involvement in human trafficking continued long after 1807.

In much of her work she provided in-depth histories centred on key figures and organisations in Britain, including Kwame Nkrumah: The Years Abroad 1935-1947; Claudia Jones: A Life in Exile; Origins of Pan-Africanism: Henry Sylvester Williams, Africa and the African Diaspora; Malcolm X: Visits Abroad and Kwame Nkrumah and the Dawn of the Cold War: The West African National Secretariat 1945-48. Ctd....