14

Telling the Story

‘That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,

But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.’

Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘The Grandmother’

‘There Remains No Trace’

As we have seen, after the massacre of Debre Libanos Graziani confidently informed Rome that ‘no trace’ of the monastery remained. Since there had been around a thousand resident clergy, plus several hundred laymen and women, and at least another thousand or more regular visitors associated with the monastery, the only way of ensuring complete liquidation would have been to execute all these people, amounting to at least two thousand. The monastery confirms that around one thousand clergy were executed, as testified by all available eyewitnesses. Furthermore, based on the testimony of the eyewitnesses, an additional thousand or so visiting clergy and pilgrims were also executed, which is consistent with the monastery publication stating that the total death toll of the massacre was around two thousand. It is clear that the Debre Libanos community was, as planned, completely liquidated.

Had Maletti’s intention been to execute ‘only’ 297 clergy, the most difficult time to do it would have been on a special saint’s day, when more than two thousand other people would be crowding around, making the process almost impossible. And he certainly would not have made the exercise even more difficult by announcing that everybody should attend on that day, on pain of excommunication from the monastery. Rather, he would simply have sent one of his brigades unannounced, executed the first 297 clergy he came across, and then left. The only possible purpose of enticing the greatest possible number of people to the monastery would have been to include them as victims, thereby ensuring that no trace of the monastery would remain.

On 27 May the viceroy telegraphed the minister for the colonies, reporting the shooting of the deacons. He also stated that ‘there are left alive only thirty schoolboys’, which was true.¹ Judging from the behaviour of the Eritrean askaris at Borale—their having spared a young boy, and having turned a blind eye to Feqyibelu hiding as he watched the executions—it is apparent that some of them were reluctant, or unwilling, to shoot children. In fact, the Christian Eritreans had a reputation for mutinying when ordered to commit civilian atrocities. The 45th (Muslim) Colonial Battalion, which could have been relied on to carry out such executions, had moved on to the Mendida area,² and thus was no longer available for operations at Borale, which is why the executions there had to be carried out by a regular Eritrean company. Perhaps it was for that reason that Graziani did not order the boys to be shot.

Nonetheless, there was a snag: the full extent of the massacre at Borale had been kept secret not just from the Ethiopians, but also from Rome, and the viceroy could not afford to run the risk of the truth getting out. All witnesses had to be eliminated. He would have realised that the boys were most likely aware of the actual scale of the massacre, and so he could not risk them going home to Debre Libanos, for word would soon get about. For Graziani, that left only one solution—the method he usually employed when he wanted people out of circulation: concentration camps. Only a few weeks before, he had reported in breath-takingly light-hearted fashion how he had dispatched to Danane concentration camp 1,100 men, women and children ‘who represent Amhara people of no particular importance, but who for the moment had better be prevented from roaming about’.³

For the 30 boys of Debre Libanos, that was the answer. For now they would be held at Debre Birhan, but eventually they would follow these unfortunates to the infamous concentration camp in far-away Italian Somaliland, from which they would most likely never return.⁴

However, that still left the problem of Lessona. The minister might well have used Graziani’s decision to deport 30 innocent children to Danane—after he had told Rome that they had been spared—as further proof of his unsuitability for office. So the viceroy added to his previous lies with yet another, glibly reporting, ‘there are left alive only 30 schoolboys, who have been sent to their native homes in the various districts of Shewa’.⁵

The Final Toll

The problem of Debre Libanos was now resolved. The congregation of Ethiopia’s leading monastery had been exterminated, together with anyone else who had any involvement in its affairs.

We can conclude that between 1,800 and 2,200 Christians were executed in the massacre of Debre Libanos. The monastic community normally numbered at least 1,400 to 1,600, rising to over 2,300 on special occasions.⁶ During the Italian occupation, when times were hard for the Ethiopians, the number would typically have been rather less, but given the importance of the celebrations of May 1937, when the community was told that anyone who did not attend would be barred in future, the congregation could hardly have numbered less than 2,000, and could have been more.⁷ Thus it is not surprising that in his report of the executions, Graziani proudly informed Mussolini that the monastic community had been completely liquidated.⁸

The toll in Table 14.1 includes five deaths in the basement of the House of the Cross at Debre Libanos, which was erected by Emperor Menelik II in the early 20th century to house the cross of St Tekle Haymanot. Immediately after the massacre, Debre Libanos was deserted. Nonetheless, in late June 1937, one month after the massacre, someone forced open the door to the cellar of Mesqel Bét. As he entered, he was taken aback by a nauseous odour and, in the half-light was greeted by an awful sight. The children and servants of Tsebaté Gebre-Maryam, who had been locked inside for safety, had died a terrible death by starvation. Unable to escape, and without food, their cries for help had been unheard in the deserted monastery.

It seems that the tsebaté himself, despite being a Fascist appointee, had locked up his charges in the hideaway. Whether he still had the key in his possession, or managed to hand it to someone else before disappearing, is unknown, but even if he did, by the time the door was opened it was too late. More than half a century later, this tragic episode is still spoken of in hushed tones by the old men and women of Chagel. It is one of the most poignant stories of the Italian occupation.

The best estimate that can now be made of the final death toll of Debre Libanos is set out in Table 14.1.

Table 14.1:

Number of Victims Killed in the Massacre of Debre Libanos

A Secret Message

It is clear that the number of victims of the massacre of Debre Libanos as reported in Maletti’s telegrams (320 monks and 129 deacons of Debre Libanos) is much lower than the actual total as indicated by both the eyewitness accounts and the monastery publication (both indicate the death of around 2,000 clergy and pilgrims). We also note that Maletti’s figures are limited to the executions he was instructed by Graziani to carry out; the viceroy’s telegrams did not instruct him to execute clergy from other churches, nor did they tell him to execute the pilgrims.

The question then arises: if Maletti received no order to execute all the other people he was holding captive, why did he do so? After all, his report suggests a cautious commander, his aim having been only to ‘set the monastery straight’, and it gives the impression that he carried out executions only when ordered to do so. So what induced such a cautious commander to exceed his mandate, far beyond his written instructions?

The answer most likely lies in an extraordinary incident not previously published, and unknown to the present author when he wrote The Massacre of Debre Libanos.⁹ On 19 February, the same day that Graziani sent Maletti the telegram instructing him to execute the monks, he also sent him a personal and private message that was off the record. Classified as ‘most urgent’, the message was taken across to the Regia Aeronautica in Addis Ababa, on the instruction of the viceroy, to be carried in a clandestine manner by aeroplane and dropped at the monastery of Debre Libanos for Maletti. So far as is known, no carbon copy of this clandestine message was ever made, and as it was not telegraphed, no text was ever on file. After receiving it, later the same day, the Regia Aeronautica confirmed that the viceroy’s ‘most urgent’ message would be delivered to Maletti by air as required.¹⁰

It is clear that the mission was accomplished as promised, for at 11.20 pm on the next day, 20 May, in a telegram to Graziani updating him on recent increases in the number of captives, Maletti informed the viceroy that he would ensure that the instructions in what he referred to as the viceroy’s ‘secret message’ were implemented. ‘I will carry out the order firmly,’ he assured Graziani.¹¹

It is difficult to imagine that Graziani’s secret message dropped at the monastery for Maletti, being off the record, and delivered separately from the telegrams he was dispatching at the same time to the same general, could have been anything other than a supplementary order to execute all of the captives. This would explain why Maletti executed everyone he had rounded up, and it would also explain one of the greatest mysteries of the massacre: how it was that by the following day, 21 May, he had ordered a platoon to begin excavating three large mass graves at Borale capable of accommodating hundreds of bodies three days before he received the telegram instructing him to conduct the second set of executions.

The secrecy of this unofficial message would of course explain why neither Maletti nor Graziani reported the additional executions. But at the same time, the knowledge that Maletti had followed the instructions in the message would explain why the viceroy was confident enough to inform Rome that the monastery had been completely liquidated. In which case, Graziani knew more than he ever told Mussolini, and he and Maletti took their secret to the grave.¹²

‘The Dogs Have Martyrs in Their Mouths’

Following the massacre, the Italians cordoned off the execution site at Laga Weldé. Nonetheless, a few brave souls ventured forth, one of whom was the fifteen-year-old local resident Zewdé Gebru, who saw the bodies there. As the site was still being guarded, how close he was able to get to the scene of carnage is not clear. Yet in the tv2000 documentary Debre Libanos, he states that he could see between 600 and 700 bodies, though doubtless only those on top of the piles of corpses in the gulley of the Fincha Wenz would have been visible.

Meanwhile, in the valley of the Borale River at Ingécha, silence reigned. For three days after the executions, soldiers returned to the site to check on the mass graves—presumably to ensure that the evidence was not being uncovered. But soon hyenas and vultures started appearing in the valley to get at the bodies. In some sections of the trenches, the corpses were piled up so high that they almost reached ground level. Mulatwa would recount with horror that ‘dogs were seen with the bodies of the martyrs in their mouths’, and as the days passed, the smell of death hung in the air. And Negash Yirgu recalled, ‘For fifteen days the stench was terrible. Wild animals were getting at the bodies.’¹³

However, in June the ‘long rains’ arrived, washing topsoil from the slopes down into the Borale River gulley, covering the execution site. As each year passed, with increased cultivation of the surrounding countryside, environmental degradation increased, the gulley was filled in, and the shallow valley became a floodplain, leaving the corpses that had not been dragged away by wild animals deeper below the surface. None of the residents dared attempt to retrieve or interfere with the bodies, for fear of the risk of prison or death.

A Deafening Silence

When news of the cold-blooded murder of the clergy of one of Christendom’s greatest and most revered monasteries reached the Vatican, what was the reaction? What was the response to the destruction of a venerable institution that had been known to the Holy See for centuries, and that had produced theologians whose work had laid the foundations of the Pontifical Ethiopian College and the national church of Italy, the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli? Was the pope outraged that the holy war was out of control? Did he conclude that the Vatican’s marriage of convenience with Fascism had taken the faithful too far from the path of righteousness?

Amazingly, there was no reaction. No denunciation; no regret; not even a comment. The Vatican had not condemned the martyrdom of Bishops Pétros and Mikaél, the massacre of Addis Ababa, the burning and looting of St George’s Cathedral, or the bombing of churches and monasteries, and those silences were in themselves telling. But how could the Holy See remain silent in the face of the carnage now being endured by the Ethiopian Church? Should there not have been at least an appearance of concern and compassion?

It might be argued that the silence of the pope in the face of atrocities during the invasion, and his infamous reference to Italy’s ‘happy triumph of a great and good people’ in May 1936, arose from the fact that information about how that ‘happy triumph’ had been achieved had not reached Rome in the heat of battle. But the massacre of Debre Libanos, which took place later, during the occupation, was a complex operation. It had spanned several days, and had been reported in writing to Rome. Furthermore, at the time of the massacre there was a substantial Italian Catholic presence in Ethiopia, including a personal representative of the pontiff and numerous Catholic clergy. It is thus most unlikely that the Vatican could have been unaware of the carnage. In October 1936 the Holy See had dispatched to Ethiopia a group of missionaries from the Verona Institute under the Congregation for the Oriental Churches,¹⁴ and there was an apostolic delegate in the country, supported by senior clerics and numerous priests, brothers and nuns. These clerics were certainly well aware of what was happening to the Ethiopian clergy, for they were engaging with them, as they themselves reported, ‘put[ting] forth strenuous efforts to bring the Ethiopian Church under the influence of the Pope’.¹⁵

During the invasion and the first few months of the war of occupation, Pope Pius XI was quite unwell. However, by Easter 1937 he had recovered sufficiently to resume some of his duties. Moreover, the secretary of state, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, was in a position to intervene. He was, for example, well able to handle the situation when Archbishop George Mundelein in America delivered a speech containing a public attack on Adolf Hitler that achieved such notoriety that the German government demanded an apology from the Vatican. Pacelli lost no time in addressing that issue, and the slaughter at Debre Libanos took place in the very same week.¹⁶

On 31 May, his 80th birthday, Pope Pius was again unwell and had to cancel a public function.¹⁷ So while we would not necessarily expect to find him personally denouncing atrocities, the Holy See was functioning quite normally. We would therefore expect the secretary of state to have ensured that the Holy See took a clear position on the massacre of Debre Libanos, particularly as he was a well-organised administrator, with under-secretaries supported by professional staff in touch with the media, a bevy of apostolic nuncios, and a vast network of informants, both official and unofficial. In fact, the secretary of state was meticulous. He had a prodigious memory, and insisted on being informed of everything. He met the pope every morning, and reserved two mornings a week to meet individually with each of the thirty ambassadors accredited to the Vatican.¹⁸

It is clear that being articulate, and in a position to speak for the ailing pontiff if necessary, Cardinal Pacelli would have been able to make informed judgements, speak out against the atrocities being carried out against the Ethiopian Church, and probably moderate Graziani’s persecutions, had he wished to do so.

It appears, however, that he did not wish to do so, for the Italian episcopate seems to have been quite pleased with the situation in Ethiopia. The members of the Anti-Blasphemy Committee of Verona, for example, were so delighted that they made a proposal to erect a monument to Christ the King in Addis Ababa, ‘as an act of gratitude to the God of Hosts for blessing Fascist Italy and its Duce, and for addressing the heretical blasphemies that for centuries kept these [Orthodox Christian] people backward, pagan, uncivilised and barbaric’.¹⁹

The Holy See itself continued to be silent about the level of barbarism employed to address the Ethiopians’ ‘heretical blasphemies’. But whatever the reasons for that silence, for the Italian military in Ethiopia it could once again only imply consent: a green light for them to carry on. In any case, embedded within the High Command in Addis Ababa was the pope’s personal representative, Archbishop Castellani, who apparently saw only a beautiful peace. It is then not surprising that as soon as he had finished liquidating Debre Libanos, far from scaling down the suppression of the Ethiopian Church, the viceroy turned up the heat.