Zerai Deres - Wikipedia
Lion of Judah incident[edit]
Lion of Judah incident in the news
Il Messaggero (June 17, 1938)
The Times (June 16, 1938)
On June 15, 1938,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][excessive citations] shortly before his planned return to his homeland, Zerai went to Princess of Piedmont Boulevard[13] (now Luigi Einaudi Boulevard) during lunchtime and knelt at the foot of the Monument to the Lion of Judah, a symbol of the Ethiopian monarchy. The sculpture had been brought to Rome as spoils of war by the Italian fascist regime in 1935,[3] placed under the monument to the fallen of Battle of Dogali, and inaugurated on May 8, 1937, at the eve of celebrations for the first anniversary of the Italian Empire proclamation.[22][23]
As a small crowd gathered around Zerai, an Italian military officer tried to interrupt his devotions. Zerai pulled out a scimitar, struck the officer,[15] and shouted imprecations against Italy and the Duce, while praising the Negus (Ethiopian monarch). During the confrontation, Zerai injured Italian Railways private Vincenzo Veglia, State employee Ferdinando Peraldi, and Infantry Chief Marshal Mario Izzo, who reported very slight[24] wounds that healed within 12 days.[13] According to other reports, some passersby, including a butcher's boy who hurled his bicycle at the Eritrean,[15][14]) were also injured.
Finally, two soldiers ended the attack with gunfire, shooting Zerai four times.[16] Zerai was wounded in the thigh.[13]
Reactions to the incident[edit]
For political reasons, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was planning to repatriate the Abyssinian aristocrats not welcome in Rome to Ethiopia. (By July 1939 only one out of ninety of the detainees remained in Rome).[25] That plan suddenly accelerated when on June 15, 1938, Mussolini was informed that Zerai, who worked as an interpreter for the Ras confined in Rome, had shouted imprecations against Italy and praised Haile Selassie in front of the monument to the fallen of Dogali. Informed that some people had been severely wounded in attempting to silence Zerai, Mussolini become furious and ordered the total repatriation of all Ethiopian noblemen.[25]
However, the repatriation effort was slowed by the need to evaluate each case individually, as some Ethiopian dignitaries (including Ras Seyoum Mengesha, Ras Kebede Mengesha, Ras Mulugeta Yeggazu, and Degiac Asrate Mulughietà[25]) were suspected of inspiring Zerai's protest, and it was preferable to exile them in Libya or the Dodecanese.[25][26]
Internment and death[edit]
The episode was considered by the Italian authorities as an action of mental illness. Zerai was arrested, hospitalized at the Umberto I Policlynic, and then taken to Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto (province of Messina, Sicily)[5][27] to the criminal asylum "Vittorio Madia".[3]
During his internment, Zerai repeatedly tried to prove his mental sanity, but he failed to convince the Italian doctors. He also wrote letters to his family: on December 3, 1938, Zerai stated he was in good health and asked his brother Tesfazien Deres to reject the honorary title that Tesfazien had received from the Italian government. He wrote, "I'm fine. Always have been, and still am, in full possession of my mental faculties. I am in the Asylum only on account of government policy." According to the Italian historian Alessandro Triulzi, "The few letters he left behind bear witness to his lucidity."[3]
After seven years[28] at Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto asylum, Zerai died at the age of 31, on July 6, 1945.[5][3]
Repatriation of remains[edit]
Tesfazion Deres wrote this letter to Emperor Selassie to get an airplane to bring home Zerai
Zerai's brother Tesfazien, founder of the Eritrea Independent Party, thinking that Zerai was still alive in an Italian prison in Italy, wrote a personal letter to the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie asking to provide an airplane to Italy in order to bring his brother home.[27] Tesfazien also approached the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ambaye Wolde Mariam to present the case to the Imperial Palace, initially without success.[27]
Finally, Tesfazien reached Zerai in Sicily in July 1939, but he could do nothing to get his brother free from the asylum.[5]
After Zerai's death in 1945, Tesfazien was able after a long struggle to repatriate his brother's remains to Eritrea.[27][29] Zerai was buried in St. Mary's Church in Hazega, in front of which stands a monument depicting the patriot together with two lions.[30][31]
Lionization[edit]
The story of Zerai Deres was mythicized in the postwar era, turning him into a national folk hero
At the end of World War II, the story of Zerai Deres was rewritten, dramatized, and sung in Ethiopia to celebrate his anti-colonial resistance, especially by the pan-Ethiopian who opposed the separation of Eritrea from Ethiopia.[32][3] Zerai also became a hero of the antifascism movement.[33]
Due to the prevalence of oral tradition, numerous and even contradictory details went to enhance the character, until he became a national folk hero in both Ethiopia and Eritrea, a status he retains to this day.[34] Among the various reconstructions, there is one that sets the story during a celebratory event of the second anniversary of the announcement of the Italian empire (although the Italian empire's proclamation that made Ethiopia part of Italian East Africa was annually celebrated a month earlier, on May 9). The young Eritrean would have been chosen to take part in the military parade and carry a ceremonial sword that would have greeted the Italian king Vittorio Emanuele III, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini (although, as evidenced by the historical sources, none of the three were in Rome in those days, and in each case there was not any parade on June 15 in the capital city). Coming to the Piazza dei Cinquecento[35] and recognizing the golden sculpture of the Lion of Judah to which his ancestors swore allegiance,[36] Zerai would have been struck by a sudden amok or impetus of anti-colonial patriotism, deciding to stop at the steps, kneel, and pray towards the statue-symbol;[37][38] or, with a sudden feeling of anger, he would hit with a sword the first Italian to cross his path.
According to other sources, Zerai killed at least five people, as well as wounded others, screaming words like "The Lion of Judah is avenged!" before being arrested or killed by the fascists on the spot in a hail of gunfire.
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