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.

In October 2022 Marika was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of History at the University of Chichester.  When receiving the award she said:

I am honoured to accept this award and am extremely grateful to Professor Adi. I hope that I can inspire more students to research areas that universities have not been not looking at – the working classes, colonialisation, and the history of black people in the UK, which largely remains unexplored.

Prof Adi , whose latest book is African and Caribbean People in Britain, said:

I am delighted to present Marika with an honorary doctorate for her contributions to history. We first met in 1987 when I was a PhD student and she came to a seminar at which I was speaking. We have been friends and colleagues since, working and writing together as well as jointly launching BASA. This award is greatly deserved and long overdue.

In 2010, Marika was invited to contribute to the Kwame Nkrumah Centenary Colloquium in Accra. She wrote nine entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on the following: Dusé Mohamed, a journalist and playwright; Peter McFarren Blackman, a political activist; Robert Broadhurst, a pan-African nationalist leader; William Davidson, George Daniel Ekarte, minister and community worker; Nathaniel Akinremi Fadipe writer and anti-colonialist; Claudia Jones, communist and journalist; Ras Tomasa Makonnen, political activist and Henry Sylvester Williams pan-Africanist.

Manchester University Censored Marika Sherwood’s Talk

In March 2017 Marika was invited by students at Manchester University to give a talk, as part of Israel Apartheid Week. Marika chose the title, “A Holocaust survivor’s story and the Balfour declaration: You’re doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to me.” In the light of Gaza it is prescient.

The Zionist lobby and Israeli politicians don’t like to be reminded that their chants of Death to the Arabs, their apartheid policies and talk of extermination mirror what the Nazis did to the Jews. For them the Holocaust is sui generis.

The Jewish News reported that Manchester University had

censored the title of a talk in March by Holocaust survivor Marika Sherwood, ....

The subhead of the title was dropped and the university said it would record the speech after a visit to the university by Mark Regev, the Israeli ambassador, and his civil affairs attaché, Michael Freeman.

Following his visit, Freeman sent an email to Manchester University’s head of student experience, Tim Westlake, which thanked him for discussing the “difficult issues that we face”.

Freeman also said in the email that the title of Sherwood’s talk violates the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, and criticised another speaker as anti-Semitic.

Both of these events will to [sic] cause Jewish students to feel uncomfortable on campus and that they are being targeted and harassed for their identity as a people and connection to the Jewish state of Israel. I would be grateful if you could look into these events and take the appropriate action,” Freeman wrote to Westlake.

This idea that anti-Zionist critiques of Israel, because it challenges some Jewish students identification with Israel, is a form  of harassment is profoundly undemocratic and a recipe for the abolition of free speech. Would British universities have prevented anti-Nazi meetings on campuses in the 30s for fear that German students would feel uncomfortable?  Would they have banned anti-Apartheid meetings in the 70s and 80s because White students from South Africa would object?

The email also said:

We welcome debate and discussion and see it as an essential part of a healthy democracy and open society. In the case of these two particular events, we feel that this is not legitimate criticism but has rather crossed the line into hate speech.

What we had is racists deciding what is and is not legitimate and Manchester University going along with them in this.

The Guardian got access to the email after the Information Commissioner’s Office told the University to disclose “all correspondence between the University of Manchester and the Israeli lobby” between February 1 and March 3.

Marika Sherwood said that:

I was just speaking of my experience of what the Nazis were doing to me as a Jewish child. I had to move away from where I was living, because Jews couldn’t live there. I couldn’t go to school. I would have died were it not for the Christians who baptised us and shared papers with us to save us

Sherwood told The Guardian. “I can’t say I’m a Palestinian, but my experiences as a child are not dissimilar to what Palestinian children are experiencing now.”

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy was quoted in Ha’aretz as saying:

Comparing Israel to the Nazi regime could reasonably be considered anti-Semitic, given the context, according to the [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's] working definition of antisemitism, which is accepted by the British government, the Labour Party, the NUS [National Union of Students] and most British universities.

In other words the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism directly led to the censorship of Marika’s talk.

Manchester University said a free speech code applied to all campus events involving outside speakers and ‘controversial topics’ and that the university also consulted “relevant laws, including the Equality Act 2010,” in setting the guidelines for the event.

This is just verbal flatulence. The Equality Act has nothing to say about freedom of speech nor Jewish identity come to that.

On January 13 I was part of a delegation which met Manchester University’s Vice Chancellor Duncan Iveson and its Vice-President for Social Responsibility, Prof. NalinThakkar. Representatives also came from UK Jewish Academic Network, Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) Greater Manchester, Jewish Action for Palestine Manchester, Na’amod NorthWest and Manchester Jewish Students’ Kehillah. I represented Jewish Network for Palestine.

The delegation arose out of a ‘debate’ held as part of the Whitworth debate series on October 31 2024. The title of this debate  was “Is antizionism antisemitism?”.

In an Open Letter to Iveson the 6 Jewish organisations wrote on 27 November that:

Not only is this question absurd to any serious historian of zionism, but the presentation of the debate framed as one to be argued on a religious basis - that is, as a dispute between Muslims and Jews - could do nothing other than result in an event of intellectual vacuity, while – as some wrote to the organisers asking them to change this framing - needlessly inflaming intercommunal tensions and exacerbating both islamophobia and antisemitism. This is indeed what happened on October 31^st, just as many had warned the organisers.  

The letter went on to say that:

it seems extraordinary to us that an event billed as relevant to the current horror in Gaza, which a large number of the world’s most respected institutions are now referring to as a genocide, should have included no academic specialist in either Palestinian or Jewish history. Indeed we can only sympathise with the enraged despair of the brave young Palestinian woman who shouted out during the debate to ask why, while her people were being massacred by zionists, there was not even a Palestinian voice on the stage. She was forcibly dragged out of the hall by burly university security men, but her quintessential question still reverberates unanswerably around the world. The root cause of the century old conflict is the struggle for self-determination of the Palestinian people in the face of a settler colonial enterprise in which the UK has played a significant role. Attempts to portray this instead as a religious war are ahistorical, inflammatory and deeply divisive.

This resulted in our meeting. However it was clear that nothing that we had said about alternative Jewish voices to Zionism and support for Israel was being taken seriously. Manchester University, like most academic institutions, is too much a part of the British state to ever break free of the imperialist paradigm.

That is most evident in its support for the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism which is not about anti-Semitism but the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge wrote that the IHRA

fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite. ‘A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred’ invites a string of questions. Is anti-Semitism solely a matter of perception? What about discriminatory practices and policies? What about perceptions of Jews that are expressed otherwise than as hatred?

There are many similar critiques of the IHRA including legal opinions from Hugh Tomlinson KC who warned that it had

a potential chilling effect on public bodies which, in the absence of definitional clarity, may seek to sanction or prohibit any conduct which has been labelled by third parties as antisemitic without applying any clear criterion of assessment.

Which is exactly what happened at Manchester University. Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson KC wrote that:

There is one aspect which I find remarkable, ... Despite its imprecision, it [the IHRA] does pivot upon manifestations of “hatred towards Jews.” As I point out in paragraph 2 above, “hatred” is a very strong word. It is the emotion that can be deduced in those who daub abhorrent slogans on tombstones and Synagogues, but it falls short of capturing those who express only hostility or prejudice, or who practice discrimination... This consideration, above all others, convinces me that the definition is not fit for purpose, or any purpose that relies upon it to identify anti-Semitism accurately.

There are also Zionists such as Professor Geoffrey Alderman who are highly critical of what he called ‘a flawed and faulty definition of antisemitism’. David Feldman, Director of Birkbeck's Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism asked

So does the IHRA definition that Britain has adopted provide the answer [to the problem of anti-Semitism]? I am sceptical. Here is the definition’s key passage: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.” This is bewilderingly imprecise.

The text also carries dangers. It trails a list of 11 examples. Seven deal with criticism of Israel. Some of the points are sensible, some are not. Crucially, there is a danger that the overall effect will place the onus on Israel’s critics to demonstrate they are not antisemitic. The home affairs committee advised that the definition required qualification “to ensure that freedom of speech is maintained in the context of discourse on Israel and Palestine”. It was ignored.

Kenneth Stern

And what of Kenneth Stern, the American academic who was the principal drafter of the IHRA. In an article I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it Stern wrote that: 

Fifteen years ago, as the American Jewish Committee’s antisemitism expert, I was the lead drafter of what was then called the “working definition of antisemitism”. It was created primarily so that European data collectors could know what to include and exclude. That way antisemitism could be monitored better over time and across borders.

It was never intended to be a campus hate speech code, but that’s what Donald Trump’s executive order accomplished this week. This order is an attack on academic freedom and free speech, and will harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself.

Yet that is what the IHRA has become.  A hate speech code.

On 29 January 2025, Trump issued an Executive Order (the Antisemitism EO) entitled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism.” This built on an order that Trump signed during his first term—EO 13899—that required federal agencies to consider the IHRA definition of antisemitism and its accompanying examples when enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI).

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance

Trump’s EO states that it is intended to address the “barrage of discrimination” that Jewish students have faced “in our schools and on our campuses” since October 7, 2023, such as

“denial of access to campus common areas and facilities, including libraries and classrooms; and intimidation, harassment, and physical threats and assault.”

The  obvious question to ask is why Trump, a racist extraordinaire, who spoke of neo-Nazis at Charlottesville as ‘some very fine people’ and who has targeted migrants of colour as rapists and criminals, whilst offering asylum to White Afrikaaners is concerned with ‘anti-Semitism’? It is proof  positive that the ‘anti-Semitism’ he is concerned with is nothing more than anti-Palestinian racism.

Leaving aside the litany of lies about Jewish students being denied access to campus facilities etc. when it is common knowledge that it is pro-Palestinian protesters who have been harassed, beaten and attacked, what does this say about the IHRA that an open racist and bigot endorses it?

We only have to turn to Ken Stern’s testimony to Congress of November 7, 2017.  Referring to the use of the IHRA in Britain Stern wrote:

The EUMC’s “working definition” was recently adopted in the United Kingdom and applied to campus. An “Israel Apartheid Week” event was cancelled as violating the definition. A Holocaust survivor [Marika Sherwood] was required to change the title of a campus talk, and the university mandated it be recorded, after an Israeli diplomat complained that the title violated the definition.

Perhaps most egregious, an off-campus group [Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s] citing the definition called on a university to conduct an inquiry of a professor (who received her PhD from Columbia) for antisemitism, based on an article she had written years before. The university then conducted the inquiry. And while it ultimately found no basis to discipline the professor, the exercise itself was chilling and McCarthy-like.’

I mention this because Professor Nalin Thakkar sent an email to the 6 Jewish representatives that he met in January defending Manchester University’s continued use of the IHRA. Thakkar wrote:

In line with the majority (100) of UK higher education institutions (along with UK national government, devolved governments in Wales and Scotland, many local authorities including GMCA, College of Policing), and UK government policy ... the University adopted the IHRA working definition of antisemitism in June 2020.

 The University adopted the definition as guidance, which I have attached, and has due regard to the definition when interpreting and understanding antisemitism if and when raised in the University context….   

our approach to the IHRA definition does not affect the application of equality law and the rights it affords to members of our community, or our commitment to provide an environment free from harassment and discrimination.   

It also does not affect our legal obligations and the legal rights of our staff and students in relation to freedom of speech and expression, including to discuss and question difficult and sensitive topics, views and opinions, provided that is done responsibly, with respect for others, and within the law.

Thakkar seems to be saying that because most universities had caved in, under threat of defunding by former Education Secretary and toilet salesman, Gavin Williamson, Manchester University should do likewise. This is institutional cowardice.

I have responded with a letter (copied below) on behalf of Jewish Network for Palestine.  It is plain as a pikestaff that ‘anti-Semitism’ is being weaponised to defend Israel and its imperialist backers. No one seriously thinks that a racist like Trump is losing sleep over the ‘suffering’ of Jewish students.

The real question is why Manchester University is not willing to ditch a ‘definition of anti-Semitism’ that is deeply racist by defining Palestinian’s experience of racism as a form of anti-Semitism and thus making them invisible. In the IHRA’s eyes to call Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians racist is to be anti-Semitic. Yet there are a thousand reasons why Israel is racist. It is time that Manchester University and other academic institutions stopped  dissembling.

That the IHRA was used to prevent a holocaust survivor Marika Sherwood from explaining why her treatment by the Nazis was similar to that of Palestinians by the Israelis is reason enough to get rid of it.

Tony Greenstein

See also

In Memoriam: Marika Sherwood

Marika Sherwood obituary - Guardian

Marika Sherwood - Wikipedia

UK university censors title of Holocaust survivor's speech criticising Israel – Guardian Education