On May 1936 the second Italian-Ethiopian War ended with the victory of Fascist Italy and the flight of the Ethiopian emperor to Jerusalem. On the 5th of May, Ethiopia was declared an Italian province, and later that year it was included in "Italian Eastern Africa", an Italian occupation zone that comprised of Ethiopia, Italian Somaliland and Eritrea.
At the end of that year, Carlo Alberto Viterbo, lawyer, journalist and Zionist activist from Florence, was sent to Ethiopia in order to establish contact with the Jews of the area. Viterbo toured the main areas where Jews resided. He was accompanied by Taamrat Emmanuel, a Jewish Ethiopian intellectual, who was a dominant figure in the revival of Ethiopian Jewry.
Viterbo traveled with a camera, and documented the Ethiopian Jews extensively. The Viterbo photo collection that is kept at the CZA, comprising more than 2,500 photographs, is an important and unique source for research of the Falash Mura. It is also a fascinating visual account of the beginning of the Italian Fascist occupation of Ethiopia.