Zerai Deres was an Eritrean translator and patriotic revolutionary. In 1938, he engaged in an act of public devotion to an important symbol of his native country, the Monument to the Lion of Judah, at the time kept in Rome. When interrupted, he violently protested against Italian colonialism while brandishing a scimitar, which led to his arrest and internment in a psychiatric hospital for seven years, until his death. However, contemporary Italian historians doubt the claim that he was mentally unstable. Zerai's protest, lionized after the end of the Second World War, is considered by Eritrean and Ethiopian historiography as part of the movement against Italian occupation. To this day, Zerai is considered a legend and a folk hero of anticolonialism and antifascism both in Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Zerai Deres
First Eritrean young Capuchin seminarists with their teachers in Segeneiti on November 6, 1934. During the seminar Zerai Deres (fourth from left on the top, with number 3) took the name of Francesco da Adiyeheys
Monument to the Lion of Judah at the Rome memorial to the fallen of the Battle of Dogali, before its repatriation
Il Messaggero (June 17, 1938)
Monument to the Lion of Judah
The monument to the Lion of Judah is a statue of the Lion of Judah, a symbol of Ethiopian Emperors and Ethiopia, and is located in Addis Ababa.
Monument to the Lion of Judah
The Lion of Judah at the obelisk to the fallen of Battle of Dogali in Rome, Italy
The Lion of Judah sculpture in the collection of the National Museum of Ethiopia.
