What Was Done to Ethiopia: A Fire that Still Burns
What Was Done to Ethiopia: A Fire that Still Burns
In the green highlands of Ethiopia, in the heart of a proud and ancient nation, a war crime unfolded that the world has mostly forgotten. It happened between 1935 and 1940, as fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia in a brutal attempt to crush the last great African kingdom never colonized by Europe. But what makes this story echo into our time isn’t just the invasion—it’s how the invasion was carried out.
Italy used poison gas. Mustard gas.
This wasn’t war. It was extermination.
They dropped gas-filled bombs on fleeing civilians. They sprayed mustard gas over rivers, lakes, and livestock. They targeted Red Cross tents. Ethiopian soldiers and farmers had no gas masks, no protection, no training to even understand what was happening to them as their skin melted, lungs bled, and eyes burned with blisters.
The gas used—called HD or “Yperite”—was first tested on European flesh in the trenches of Ypres, Belgium in World War I. Thousands of white soldiers suffered and died from it. It was condemned by every civilized nation.
But in Ethiopia, the white conscience looked away.
Ethiopia was a sovereign member of the League of Nations. Haile Selassie, the emperor, pleaded for justice before the world. The League did nothing. Britain and France, fearing Mussolini might ally with Hitler, let the horror unfold.
The message was clear: treaties are for Europeans. African lives were expendable.
Today, some still think of racism as just words, or slurs, or attitudes. But in Ethiopia, racism was mustard gas raining from the sky. It was the silence of white diplomats. It was the erasure of Black suffering from European memory.
To those who are white, Omnicyclion asks you not to feel guilt—but to awaken. Do not deny what was done in your ancestors’ name. Carry it, learn from it, and be the one who breaks the cycle. Your spiritual inheritance is not the gas, but the light you can now choose to emit.
To those who are Black, Omnicyclion reminds you: Ethiopia was never truly conquered. The invaders left, and the culture endured. You are descendants of the uncolonized. You are the flame that fascism failed to extinguish. Know this. Teach this. The world needs to know not only your pain, but your power.
Omnicyclion teaches that all are one, and yet the path to unity must go through truth. Without memory, there is no healing. Without honesty, there is no progress. We must say what was done, and how, and why, so that never again becomes more than a slogan.
Never forget Ethiopia.
Never forget Ypres.
Because mustard gas doesn’t care about skin color.
But history has.
Until we see each other.
Until we heal the roots.
Until we rise together.
Nie wieder.
Let it mean something this time.
Because years earlier..
The horror of chemical warfare was not lost on those who lived its first explosion. British war poet Wilfred Owen, who served and died in the trenches of World War I, once wrote with bitter irony: “After all, the Mass is a great thing. But after 2000 years of it, we have only got as far as poison gas.” Owen saw what Europe had become — a continent of cathedrals and crematoriums, sacraments and shrapnel — where the teachings of Christ coexisted with industrial slaughter. His words remind us that civilization without conscience is camouflage. That faith without love is theatre. That liturgy, however ancient, means nothing if we let our neighbor die coughing in mud. Let it not be said again. Let it end with us.
“Lost” we forget.
The Dark Science of Mustard Gas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYDVG_DEEB8