page_title: Zerai Deres
section_title: Remembrance
hierarchical_section_title: Zerai Deres / Remembrance
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Pomník Judského lva v Addis Abebě (Etiopie). English: The Lion of Judah Monument in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia).
context_page_description: Zerai Deres was an Eritrean translator and patriot. 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.
context_section_description: In 1966, when the sculpture of the Lion of Judah was returned to Ethiopia, Emperor Haile Selassie recalled Zerai's patriotic gesture during the re-appointment ceremony held in Addis Ababa.
  After the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution, the Derg regime planned to remove the statue as a monarchic symbol. However, senior members of the war veterans association lobbied for the statue to remain as a symbol of Zerai Deres' sacrifice on behalf of antifascism. The Derg agreed to this request to save the statue, which stands in the Addis Ababa railway station square today.
  The Ethiopian Navy's first military ship, a former U.S. Navy PC-1604-class submarine chaser donated by the United States Army in 1956, was christened Zerai Deres. A Soviet-made Petya-class frigate was also dedicated to the Eritrean patriot;it was launched in 1968 and sank in February 1991 near the island of Nocra.
  The square where the Asmara's central post office and National Bank of Eritrea (former Palace of National Bank of Italy) are located was named Piazza Roma (Rome Square), but after independence it was dedicated to Zerai's memory. A number of roads, schools, hotels, and restaurants are also named after Zerai.
  In 2016, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Addis Ababa from Italian domination, a group of six stamps depicting national heroes, including Zerai, was issued by the Ethiopian Postal Service.
caption: Monument to the Lion of Judah, back in Addis Ababa since the 1960s
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