PART FIVE
18
‘Oh how the good man smiles to see what a Rod we have made for our own Back!’
William Hughes, The Man of Sin
The reader will recall that during the second half of 1937, when the pogrom against the Ethiopian clergy escalated the resistance in Gojjam to a state of outright war, serious doubts were being expressed in Rome about Graziani’s policies of terror and exemplary repression—even though they had been ordered by Mussolini.1 Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Duce’s son-in-law, was to note in his diary that Mussolini was ‘annoyed’ by what he termed ‘the revolt in Gojjam’, which was ‘of a considerable size’.2 The viceroy’s policies were intensifying resistance to Italian rule and bringing the administration into disrepute. Contemporary Italian reports on the Graziani period published in later years would speak of excessive and arbitrary use of rigorous measures, and identified the Governo Generale with injustice, ill-treatment and oppression.
The result was a gradual but definite about-turn in policy, a process that actually began in mid-July and was gathering momentum by the end of August. During that month General Maletti was still sanitising the massacre of Debre Libanos as having been a highly successful operation: the slaughter had been ‘quick and firm’, ‘opportune and salutary’, and a powerful demonstration of strength and confidence to both friends and enemies.3 But the reality was that the war was still being waged, and Graziani was beginning to be perceived by Rome as a liability.
In fact, not only were Graziani’s methods being questioned, the entire Italian policy towards the Ethiopian Church was being turned around. The barbarity of the onslaught in the Christian heartlands of Gojjam, Begémdir and Shewa had drawn the Ethiopian clergy directly into the war. By October the Ethiopians were waging their own holy war against satanic forces—a war Mussolini had begun to realise he could never win. Since the devotion of the Ethiopians to their Church was apparently indestructible, the policy now emerging from Rome was that, instead of attempting to destroy the Ethiopian Church, the Italian administration in Addis Ababa should support whatever was left of it, with the intention of using it as a means of controlling, and thereby ‘pacifying’, the general populace and getting them to submit to Italian hegemony. The dissolution of the monasteries was to come to an end, and the surviving ‘heretics and schismatics’ were now to be embraced. This diametrically opposite strategy would involve the appointment of new senior Orthodox clergy selected by the Italians from their collaborators, and would call for the repair and rehabilitation of the monasteries and churches that had been destroyed.
The new policy inevitably represented a major setback for Pius XI, who had established a special commission to develop an action plan for proselytisation and evangelisation, on the assumption that the clauses in the Italian constitution making Catholicism the state religion in Italy would be applied in occupied Ethiopia.
The dramatic change also pulled the rug out from under the feet of the senior Italian Catholic clerics who had done so much to popularise the invasion and to ensure its success. In return they had been expecting the army and the air force to deal with what they referred to as the ‘obstacle’ of the Ethiopian Orthodox clergy. Instead, the holy war was out of control, and was consuming its protagonists. Finally, the reversal was a great disappointment for the hundreds of Catholic missionaries who had already been sent to Ethiopia, as well as those standing by expecting to embark any day.
Seeds of discord between Mussolini’s administration and the Vatican over the policy in Ethiopia had actually been sown earlier, in 1936, when the Duce’s policy of showing favour to Islam first began to take effect. Daniel Binchy points out that by March 1937 a semi-official pamphlet entitled The Islamic Policy of Italy had been issued in Rome, stating, inter alia, that ‘no attempt to convert Moslems to Christianity is authorised by the Italian government’.4 This had put paid to the plans of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith to proselytise in Muslim areas; instead, they were confined to areas regarded as animist. This restriction was followed by a further narrowing of the scope of the Congregation, prohibiting Catholic missionaries from working in Orthodox Christian areas, thereby thwarting the very purpose of the crusade. Furthermore, the Italian government even rejected the Holy See’s plan to establish Catholic institutions of higher education in Ethiopia.5
For the Italian military it was also a dangerous time, for while Maletti’s soldiers were diligently scouring the countryside for Graziani’s imaginary enemies from the House of Tekle Haymanot, attacks by the resistance had increased in scale and frequency, and were being carried out on a wider front than ever before.
Quite apart from the fact that his policies of exemplary repression were now being called into question, Graziani was said by Lessona to be suffering from ‘persecution mania’, spending his nights ‘surrounded by barbed wire, machine guns, armoured cars and a battalion of guards’.6 Clearly he would not be permitted to continue in that manner for much longer, and by late August 1937, although Graziani was still in overall command of the armed forces, telegrams from the Governo Generale were being signed by his deputy, General Petretti. The viceroy had been sent to Asmara to ‘recuperate’.7
Confusion in the Governo Generale
After taking over Graziani’s office in August, General Petretti had discovered that associates of the massacre victims in the Debre Libanos area were being detained and sent to Danane concentration camp. Why were these people being deported? The deputy viceroy, whom Graziani seems never to have taken into his confidence, had stumbled across some of his superior’s machinations, now being implemented by Maletti following the viceroy’s ‘census’.
Petretti was clearly mystified by the absence of any orders for such internments. There was one telegram dated 22 June on file mentioning relatives of the massacre victims, but it contained no instructions for a widespread dragnet. Of Graziani’s ‘census’, which had been launched on 18 July, and the undercover operation that followed it, there was probably no record, the viceroy having sent his messages, as noted above, by an alternative route.
Presumably reluctant to completely countermand instructions for a major operation that had Graziani’s blessing, but realising that it ran counter to Rome’s newly emerging policy towards the Ethiopian Church, the deputy viceroy ordered the residente at Fiché to limit the operation. He then wired Debre Birhan on 25 August, informing the commander of his instruction to Fiché, noting that the telegram of 22 June had not authorised such a widespread exercise.8 Whether he liked it or not, Maletti had no choice but to pass on the instructions, telling his commanders to ‘limit and restrict’ the numbers.9
Had Petretti not taken over the Governo Generale, these deportations to Danane might never have come to light. But Graziani, who was fighting a rearguard action to preserve his position and his policies, was losing ground. In September, much to his discomfort, he was obliged to assure clergy of the Ethiopian Church that their religion, ‘in accordance with the definite wish of the Great Duce, Benito Mussolini’, was now the official religion, thereby arousing the anger of the Vatican.10
The new policy went public at Mesqel (the Ethiopian celebration of the finding of the True Cross by Helena, the mother of the 4th-century Emperor Constantine) in September, when Graziani himself attended the celebrations in Asmara. His speech on that occasion must have been one of the most painful of his career. Obliged to follow Rome’s new policy line, he started backtracking, claiming that he had been misquoted in his statements about the Ethiopian Church: far from planning to ‘wreck’ it, he was actually permitting the churches to retain their lands. Even more surprisingly, he went on to do the unthinkable: he authorised the reconstitution of the monastery of Debre Libanos, which was to be accomplished by bringing in clergy from other churches.11
Yet while Petretti was following the new policy of appeasement towards the Ethiopian Church, Graziani and his commanders in Northern Shewa were still intent on adhering to fire and fury. Once he knew that the monastery of Debre Libanos was to be resurrected, thereby invalidating whatever he had accomplished through its liquidation, having to announce it was a bitter pill to swallow. Not only had his actions against the monastery been implicitly discredited, but the plans to repopulate it meant that the families of hundreds of people who had mysteriously gone missing during the massacre would start talking to the newcomers. The viceroy was in a tight corner. No longer based in Addis Ababa, his authority had for all practical purposes been curtailed. Orders were now being dispatched from Rome directly to Addis Ababa, to be implemented by Petretti, who was not a member of Graziani’s inner circle.
Determined to silence all members of the House of Tekle Haymanot, and to eliminate anyone related to the victims of the massacre of Debre Libanos, the viceroy made his decision. While proponents of Rome’s new policy were going around wooing the clergy and drawing up plans for renovating their churches, he would ensure the incarceration of the remaining innocents of Debre Libanos in the most hideous and faraway place possible, from which, hopefully, they would never return: Danane.
Graziani’s Final Fling
By late October 1937, the final phase of Graziani’s programme of repression against the House of Tekle Haymanot was well under way. Directing it from Asmara, he had telegrams sent anonymously from the Governo Generale with ‘Graziani’ written at the bottom by hand—presumably by one of his secretaries. The fact that he got this phase of the campaign moving at all is a reflection of the close relationship between Graziani based in Eritrea, his supporters in Addis Ababa, and General Maletti in Debre Birhan. But the result was a bizarre situation in which new clergy arriving at churches on the orders of Petretti’s faction at the Governo Generale were doing so almost concurrently with the arrest of clergy and their relatives ordered by Graziani’s faction, and their transportation by the truck-load to the concentration camp at Danane.
Graziani’s ‘swansong’ in his campaign against the House of Tekle Haymanot was to run for no more than two weeks before it was brought to an end, but Maletti’s efficiency ensured that even in that brief period many were arrested, and considerable numbers deported from the prisons at Debre Birhan to Danane.
‘Consider it an opportune moment to evacuate to Danane families of monks and priests of Debre Libanos,’ said an explicit telegram sent on Graziani’s behalf from the Governo Generale to Fiché on 27 October, requesting feedback on the date of transportation, the number of prisoners and the number of vehicles required, and then adding, by hand on the telegraph sheet, ‘Urgent’ (see Appendix VI).12
The following day, Cardinal Schuster was in Milan cathedral celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the March on Rome, Fascism’s most important celebration. Speaking at High Mass, far from expressing regrets or compassion for the thousands of Ethiopian Christians who were being slaughtered, he hailed the March on Rome as having ‘prepared souls for the redemption of Ethiopia from the bondage of slavery and heresy and for the Christian renewal of the ancient empire of Rome’.13 It is ironic that slavery was hailed as one of the purported sins of Haile Selassie’s administration, for, as Schuster was speaking, innocent wives, siblings and children of the victims of the massacre of Debre Libanos were being sent into bondage in Danane concentration camp, where many of them would perish as slave labourers on the notorious Genale plantations. There was nothing secret about such projects; as late as 1940 General Nasi was ordering in writing that, instead of shooting resistance fighters who surrendered, ‘these prisoners may supply us with precious forced labour’.14
As instructed, Maletti started rounding up relatives of the massacre victims for transport to the capital en route to Danane. However, since the government in Rome had already issued orders for the repopulation of Debre Libanos, Graziani’s men in Addis Ababa were running out of time and were panicking. ‘As soon as the families of monks and priests of Debre Libanos arrive in Addis Ababa they must be made to proceed to Danane in the usual manner’, one of the viceroy’s staff at the Governo Generale instructed the military command in haste, on 2 November, using a fonogramma a mano to save time, adding that if the limited time available proved insufficient, the families should be ‘confined to the concentration camp of Akaki’.15
A telegram signed on Graziani’s behalf was sent on the same day from Addis Ababa to Debre Birhan, demanding confirmation of the evacuation of Debre Libanos within three days, the third day being marked as ‘ultimatum’, or within four days at the very latest. However, clearly under pressure, the writer was obliged to acknowledge that a new strategy was now in place, for he continued, ‘On day six will be brought to Debre Libanos the ichegé, to take possession of the monastery, bringing with him fifteen monks destined [to remain] there’. Under the new policy, imprisonment of the clergy had become a thing of the past, apparently replaced by generosity and magnanimity.16
In spite of the last-minute panic, Graziani managed to send another large group of prisoners to Danane. On 5 November 1937, he had the 94 Debre Libanos residents being held at Debre Birhan imprisoned at Nefasit, near the Eritrean capital of Asmara. There they spent two weeks, followed by deportation by military trucks to Danane.17
Included among these unfortunate captives were the 30 boys belonging to Debre Libanos families, who Graziani misinformed Rome had been sent home to their parents. They would have to be disposed of, and so it was that in November, young Tibebe found himself once again a victim of Graziani’s fury. One of the last of the community of Debre Libanos to be sent to Danane, he was transported there in a military truck, along with the other 29 youngsters.
When they arrived, following the long, harrowing journey to the sweltering Somali coast, the bewildered thirteen-year-old Tibebe was in a state of shock, for conditions at Danane were far worse than those of the bande camp at Debre Birhan. This was a world of horrors—of intense heat and the smell of death. He was put in a section where the prisoners were languishing in six tents, each accommodating some 150 or 160 inmates.18
The young boys were put together with the women, some of whom had been visiting Debre Libanos on St Michael’s Day with their families, and had ended up being imprisoned with their children. While the adults were given heavy duties such as cutting trees, Tibebe had to wash the floors where the women were living; other children cleared rubbish.
Many of the prisoners Tibebe met turned out to be people he knew from Debre Libanos. Several were relatives of the executed clergy, who had been rounded up in Maletti’s ‘census’, and transferred to Danane in late October, typically after passing through transit camps.
In all, a total of around 360 prisoners were deported to Danane from prisons at Debre Birhan during Graziani’s panic in late October and early November. Several had been arrested in the vicinity of the monastery or because they were considered to be connected with it in some way. They also included a few debteras and priests, but the majority had been visitors or passers-by. Others, as we have seen, were relatives of the victims of the massacre, already grieving and now faced with new horrors.
Danane was a death camp in all but name, for inmates were lucky to survive more than a few months. In fact, 16 of the 30 boys had already died there by the time they were transferred to other prisons less than a year later. Few of the 14 survivors returned to the monastery; in 1998 Tibebe thought that he might be the only one still alive.19 Based on this death rate, which is consistent with the rate of around fifty per cent reported by the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice official Mikaél Tessema (who was a prisoner in Danane at the time), it is likely that at least half of the 360 prisoners from Debre Libanos died at Danane.20
These 360 prisoners were only the last of those associated with the monastery to be interned. They joined those who had arrived between June and October. We do not know how many were interned in these earlier months, but the numbers were large enough for Petretti to be alarmed. Thus, just how many men, women and children associated with Debre Libanos or its clergy were sent to Danane after May 1937 is unknown, but it probably exceeded a thousand. Furthermore, it would have increased beyond this level had the pogrom not been brought to an end by the departure of Rodolfo Graziani.