Zerai Deres
Eritrean anti-fascist · Activists · Lived 1915 to 1945 · aged 30
Zerai Deres was an Eritrean revolutionary and translator. 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.
Zerai Deres is read about 16 times a day, in 8 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 25 August 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 60 days, one point a day.
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Photos 10
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
Tesfazion Deres wrote this letter to Emperor Selassie to get an airplane to bring home Zerai
The story of Zerai Deres was mythicized in the postwar era, turning him into a national folk hero
Monument to the Lion of Judah, back in Addis Ababa since the 1960sAwards
About this person
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.
