A member of the South African House of Assembly for the Progressive Federal Party for over three decades, Helen Suzman (born 1917) was known internationally for her forthright opposition to apartheid and uncompromising advocacy of the interests of millions of nonwhite and liberally-minded South Africans.

Helen Suzman was born on November 7, 1917, at Germiston in the Transvaal province of South Africa, the daughter of Samuel and Freda Gavronsky. Her father, a Jewish immigrant to South Africa from Lithuania, worked initially as a hides dealer but in time made a fortune in real estate. Suzman was educated in Johannesburg at the Parktown Convent and later at the University of Witwatersrand, where in 1940 she obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree in economics and economic history. In 1937 she married physician Moses B. Suzman, a member of a prominent Johannesburg family.

In 1944 Suzman was appointed as a part-time lecturer in the Department of Economics...