Monument to the Lion of Judah on a black granite pedestal decorated with relief portraits of Menelik II, Haile Selassie I, Zewditu, and "ras" Makonnen Wolde Mikael. The monument is located in the square in front of the old railway station and marks the end of Winston Churchill Avenue, one of the main arteries of the city. Monument to the Lion of Judah The monument to the Lion of Judah is a statue of the Lion of Judah, symbol of Ethiopian Emperors and Ethiopia. It is located in the square of the Addis Ababa railway station in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The statue is particularly well known
Monument to the Lion of Judah on May 8, 1937, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the proclamation of the Italian Empire. On June 15, 1938 the young Eritrean Zerai Deres made a protest against the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in front of the monument. Brandishing a scimitar, he wounded several onlookers and was shot by soldiers. He was arrested by the fascist militia and imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital in Sicily, where he died in 1945. For this gesture Zerai Deres is considered a national hero both in Eritrea and Ethiopia. The Lion of Judah statue remained in Rome until the 1960s, when