Yekatit 12 | The Addis Ababa Massacre: A VR Window Into a Silenced Past

Step inside history. “Gibbi” is a new virtual reality experience that transports viewers into the American compound in 1937, where Ethiopian civilians sought refuge as Italian forces turned their city to fire and ash. From within a simulated shelter, you’ll look out through shattered windows and see your neighbors’ world collapse — a haunting immersion in a story history tried to erase. After the VR experience, join a powerful conversation with artist Ezra Wube and historian Dr. Angelo Caglioti, moderated by neuroscientist Dr. Mulugeta Abebe, as we uncover the politics of silence surrounding the massacre — and draw connections to today’s battles over truth, revisionism, and resistance.

Free and open to the public. VR viewings before and after the discussion.

Yekatit 12 refers to the brutal campaign of violence carried out by Fascist Italian forces in Addis Ababa on February 19, 1937, after an attempted assassination of Italy’s viceroy. Over the next three days, Italian soldiers and colonial militias murdered thousands of civilians and set large parts of the city ablaze. Amid the chaos, nearly 700 Ethiopians fled to the American compound—known as the Gibbi—where U.S. diplomats and staff sheltered them behind the compound’s walls, defying Italian authorities and offering one of the few pockets of safety in the city. Though a defining moment in Ethiopia’s struggle against occupation, the massacre was long suppressed in international memory, making the stories of places like the Gibbi crucial for understanding both the violence itself and the global politics of forgetting.