ETHIOPIAN CIVILIANS MUSTARD GAS MASSACRES

ETHIOPIAN CIVILIANS MUSTARD GAS MASSACRES

             Matthew Dominioni, a historian of Italian colonialism, had already brought to light that yet another dark chapter in Italian history in his book The collapse of the Empire (Yale University Press). The volume was prepared in draft, this forgotten massacre had already been proposed advances from the pages of major newspapers, when Dominioni, as he says in the introduction of chemical Platoon. Abyssinian Cronoche a generation uncomfortable (Mimesis, pp.172, 12 euros), he received a call that left him stunned: "My name is John Boaglio and the son of the person who used the gas in the cave Zeret. I always knew of the existence of the cave. My father has left a diary in which he speaks of the massacre. " Chemical Platoon, the diary of Alexander Boaglio, edited by his son John and by the same Dominioni, not only tells of a horrible crime. It is a unique document of its kind. Written after his return to Italy, presumably drawn from the first half of the fifties and April 1958, the fruit of long and bitter thoughts, and certainly also a reworking of deep and painful, is the choice not to remove what time it was easier to drop into oblivion. Alessandro tells Boaglio without omission, rejects a justificatory narrative of their work, not seeking to discharge their responsibilities on their superiors. It should not have been easy to describe the act of dropping mustard gas cans while you are hanging from a rope over a cliff: the author does not seek or pity or mercy, is not asking the reader to identify himself, he does not want, as a torturer, and understood to be justified. He wants to know. There is rigor in this testimony, but there is also the consciousness of having fought a war against a people who had to learn the sacred right to rebel against the colonial rule, defines the Ethiopian patriots made ​​ hanged in the square as a warning as "heroes of 'other side', and during his stay in the colony, try to understand, even with humility, with the tools of their culture and their own age, who are the others against whom he is fighting. The result is a text full of respect. The author seems to want to plunge into the world that is trying to relate to people, although aware of being perceived as an occupier, even if accepted as a guest. She set to work in rudimentary medical interventions, trying to learn Amharic, narrated with dry descriptive power even vices of fellow occupants, mocks in highlighting how the racial laws (prohibiting romantic or sexual relationships between natives and Italians) were openly transgressed. Recounts with irony of unnecessary military missions, describes the general staff sent for observation during a battle with sarcasm, it lets you take the memory of a loving marriage in which, invited as a guest is treated like a family. Days passed in Addis Ababa, apparently pacified while the control of the vast territory in Ethiopia showed continued instability and vulnerability. The charm of colonial life is interrupted on the morning of February 19, 1937, when two young patriots Ethiopians can severely injure Graziani. From that moment nothing is as before, the ferocious and indiscriminate retaliatory strikes on the defenseless population marks a point of no return, even Boaglio is sent to be part of voluntary patrols to stop the carnage, and even there is not secretive, tells of bodies of men, women and children thrown from precipices. But the most extraordinary document of the entire text is that terrible chapter 9 from the symbolic title "The path of civilization." Here the story becomes meticulous reconstruction gives the idea of a dream or a nightmare relived it many times. On 30 March 1939 the aircraft had spotted a large group of Ethiopian patriots who was chased by a column. In relations officers intercepted the caravan was defined as "the baggage department of Abebe Aregai, a leader of the guerrillas' and in fact it was old, injured, servants, women, children, fleeing stragglers, in short, looking for shelter . They reached a cave large and well protected and were besieged, on the orders of General Lorenzini. To control the operations Lieutenant Colonel Gennaro Sora, in 1926 among the "heroes" who rescued the survivors of the noble mission to the Pole and still remembered as an officer in a respectful and loved by the people against whom he fought in Africa. Between 9 and 11 April were consumed the siege and the criminal massacre. The story of the siege of the cave is a punch in the stomach between people screaming and dying woman gives birth to a child; to him in a literary Boaglio aa the word: "How much blood, how much destruction, many dead, and I scrambled to slaughtered, to kill, to destroy ... and I am born. And I'll stop and grow up with me and millions of other beings will be born by the innocent blood, the blood of murdered fathers and triumph because justice is with us. " Until a few years ago there was still some who swore that in Africa they had brought democracy and civilization, roads and medicine, until a few years ago still influential intellectuals denied the use of gas and massacres of civilians. Early reports of those who had participated in the important phases of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia ignored or belittled the most cruel moments of conflict and when historians like Angelo Del Boca, Giorgio Rochat, Nicola Labanca began producing texts precious fruit of studies and conclusive research, the debate on Italian colonialism has often moved on ideological ground: colonialism for some of velvet, for others the most violent and racist. Dominioni started from original archival research, met with the story of Alexander Boaglio, and tried to bring the debate in the right terms. Those of a colonial war asymmetric with regard to the means and forces of the occupant, fought with all means and in the end lost, not only for the British advanced to the inability to counter a phenomenon such as the field of warfare. At the expense of civilians, the most vulnerable, as often happens in contemporary conflicts. Boaglio Alexander died at 80, after returning invalid in Italy, due to contact with mustard gas, he held various jobs until you find employment in Fiat. His memoirs published today are not only a valuable historical document: reading emerges from a deep hatred of war. Certainly, the perception of what's happening around him seems imbued with an imagery that draws on the Hollywood western, there is a detailed description of landscapes, emotions, special traits, curiosity about the traditions and people, the need to cross a culture other, which we almost instinctively grasps the wealth, while the desire to know his own, the idea of exchange and encounter. A naive, impossible to grow while the ruthless military machine takes its toll, an idea crushed by the cruelty of war. I wonder if the years to write and reflect on their past, have not served to mature Boaglio something stronger and lasting remorse for the victims. A more general reflection on human nature, the evil inherent in free every war, from which valuable today as yesterday would be inspired to not repeat mistakes that often become crimes.