Italy’s War Crimes in Ethiopia
Leave a commentOctober 24, 2012 by neverforgetcampaign
‘Italy’s war-crimes in Ethiopia: Evidence for the War Crimes Commission’ was originally published by Sylvia Pankhurst’s New Times and Ethiopia News in April 1945.
Sylvia Pankhurst, who had been publishing the weekly New Times and Ethiopia News since 1936 in order to maintain international awareness of the situation within the country, acquired a file of photographs of Italian atrocities that had been taken by the Italian themselves. The pictures had been found in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, after its liberation. These were initially published in the New Times in April 1944 before being reproduced in pamphlet form alongside excerpts from reports of the Graziani Massacre.
The pamphlet was almost immediately reprinted, with financial assistance from the Pan-Africanist T.R. Makonnen (alias G.T.N. Griffith) from Guiana. It was widely circulated, to British MPs and others. Sylvia also enlarged the photograph of the severed head of Wagshum Hailu Kebede that featured on the cover, as well as other war crimes photos, as posters. She and others carried these in a demonstration outside the House of Commons.
The Never Forget Campaign has reproduced the pamphlet here in its entirety for the first time, as we believe it is important to make available firsthand accounts of the events surrounding Rodolfo Graziani’s career in Ethiopia. Readers should be warned that the images contained in this publication are unquestionably graphic.
Never Forget 