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Campbell Ian. The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy’s National Shame. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. vii + 478pp. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Cloth. $39.95. ISBN: 9780190674724.
Most months and days in the Ethiopian calendar are remembered as the feast day of a named saint, but not Yekatit 12. On this day and the two that followed in late February 1937, Italian Fascists slaughtered between 17,000 and 20,000 innocent civilians in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and caused additionally the suffering of many thousands more. That morning, drawn in by the promise of alms, a crowd of Ethiopians, mostly clergy, the blind, the disabled, and women and children, had gathered in the grounds of the palace which was the seat of the Italian occupation. When three hand grenades were tossed onto the palace’s balcony from which speeches were being made, injuring members of the high command, it marked the beginning of a largely forgotten and long-neglected war crime. The Addis Ababa Massacre makes not only a compelling but overwhelming case as to why this neglect can no longer stand.
An informative Background chapter that places the massacre within the broader context of Italy’s conquest and occupation of Ethiopia begins Ian Campbell’s comprehensive account. The second chapter of his narrative history, The Trigger, is an account of the actual event that sparked the massacre. In chapters 3 to 7 Campbell details, hour by hour, the three days and nights of killing that followed: a slaughter in which “most of the victims had no idea why they were being attacked” (76). The next two...