The Gondrand massacre occurred on February 13, 1936, near the northern Ethiopian town of Mai Lahlà. A camp of civilian workers for the logistics company Gondrand, engaged at the time in road construction, was attacked at dawn by Ethiopian soldiers under the orders of Ras Imru. The construction yard was equipped with about 15 muskets, and the workers also used their work tools as defense weapons, but they were overwhelmed by the surprise attack of the Ethiopians. The massacre took place around the same time as the Battle of Amba Aradam, fought from 10 to 19 February, 1936, about south of Mai Lahlà.
Casualties
Of the 130 Italian workers present, 80 were killed, and the bodies of 17 of them were castrated in contravention of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie's explicit order not to mutilate enemy corpses. 27 others were wounded and four went missing. Of these, three were later confirmed to have been taken prisoner. About 40 Ethiopians soldiers also died in the attack, mostly because a store of gelignite exploded. Retaliatory massacres were carried out by Italian soldiers against Ethiopian civilians in the aftermath of the attack, resulting untold deaths.
Publicity
Italian authorities generally instructed journalists to avoid describing Italian losses during the war, but in this case the story was deliberately promoted for its propaganda value in depicting Ethiopians as barbaric. As professor of Italian studiesDavid Forgacs argues, while "the Italians sought to give maximum publicity to the massacre of Italian civilians by Ethiopians at the Gondrand camp they were equally strenuous in their efforts to prevent records or reports of their own massacres of civilians". In response to photographic evidence that some Ethiopian troops had ignored the order against mutilating corpses, Ethiopia's Foreign Minister was forced to admit that it had happened, but argued that it should be seen as an act of protest against Italian atrocities. Historian Rainer Baudendistel argues that such mutilation "was a limited phenomenon successfully blown out of proportion by adroit Italian propaganda."
