Mathematics
Tatar poet executed by the Nazis in 1944. Notebook from Moabit. The last feat of Musa Jalil. Last months of life

Tatar poet executed by the Nazis in 1944. Notebook from Moabit. The last feat of Musa Jalil. Last months of life

Recognition at the state level overtook Musa Jalil after his death. The poet, accused of treason, was given what he deserved thanks to the caring fans of his lyrics. Over time, the turn came for prizes and the title of Hero Soviet Union. But the real monument to the unbroken patriot, in addition to returning his good name, was the unquenchable interest in creative heritage. As the years pass, words about the Motherland, about friends, about love remain relevant.

Childhood and youth

The pride of the Tatar people, Musa Jalil, was born in February 1906. Rakhima and Mustafa Zalilov raised 6 children. The family lived in an Orenburg village and moved to the provincial center in search of a better life. There, the mother, being the daughter of a mullah herself, took Musa to the Muslim theological school-madrassa “Khusainiya”. Under Soviet rule, the Tatar Institute of Public Education grew out of a religious institution.

The love of poetry and the desire to express thoughts beautifully were passed on to Jalil with folk songs sung by his mother and fairy tales that his grandmother read at night. At school, in addition to theological subjects, the boy excelled in secular literature, singing and drawing. However, religion did not interest the guy - Musa later received a certificate as a technician at the workers' faculty at the Pedagogical Institute.

As a teenager, Musa joined the ranks of Komsomol members and enthusiastically campaigned for children to join the ranks of the pioneer organization. The first patriotic poems became one of the means of persuasion. In his native village of Mustafino, the poet created a Komsomol cell, whose members fought with the enemies of the revolution. Activist Zalilov was elected to the Bureau of the Tatar-Bashkir section of the Komsomol Central Committee as a delegate to the All-Union Komsomol Congress.

In 1927, Musa entered the Moscow State University, to the literary department of the ethnological faculty (future philological department). According to the recollections of his dorm roommate Varlam Shalamov, Jalil at the university received preferences and love from others due to his nationality. Not only is Musa a heroic Komsomol member, but he is also a Tatar, studying at a Russian university, writes good poetry, and reads them excellently in his native language.

In Moscow, Jalil worked in the editorial offices of Tatar newspapers and magazines, and in 1935 he accepted an invitation from the newly opened Kazan Opera Theater to head its literary department. In Kazan, the poet plunged headlong into his work, selected actors, wrote articles, librettos, and reviews. In addition, he translated works of Russian classics into Tatar. Musa becomes a deputy of the city council and chairman of the Writers' Union of Tatarstan.

Literature

The young poet’s first poems began to be published in the local newspaper. Before the start of the Great Patriotic War, 10 collections were published. The first “We Are Coming” - in 1925 in Kazan, 4 years later - another one, “Comrades”. Musa not only conducted, as they would say now, party work, but also managed to write plays for children, songs, poems, and journalistic articles.

Poet Musa Jalil

At first, in the works, propaganda orientation and maximalism were intertwined with expressiveness and pathos, metaphors and conventions characteristic of Eastern literature. Later, Jalil preferred realistic descriptions with a touch of folklore.

Jalil gained wide fame while studying in Moscow. His classmates really liked Musa’s work; his poems were read at student evenings. The young talent was enthusiastically accepted into the capital's association of proletarian writers. Jalil met Alexander Zharov and saw the performances.

In 1934, a collection on Komsomol themes, Order-Bearing Millions, was published, followed by Poems and Poems. The works of the 30s demonstrated a deeply thinking poet, not alien to philosophy and able to use the whole palette expressive means language.

For the opera “Golden-haired”, which tells about the heroism of the Bulgar tribe, which did not submit to foreign invaders, the poet reworked the heroic epic “Jik Mergen”, fairy tales and legends of the Tatar people into a libretto. The premiere took place two weeks before the start of the war, and in 2011 the Tatar Opera and Ballet Theater, which, by the way, bears the name of the author, returned the production to its stage.

As composer Nazib Zhiganov later said, he asked Jalil to shorten the poem, as required by the laws of drama. Musa categorically refused, saying that he did not want to remove the lines written “with the blood of his heart.” The head of the literary department was remembered by a friend as a caring person, interested and concerned about Tatar musical culture.

Close friends told me how colorful literary language the poet described all sorts of funny stories that happened to him, and then read them out to the company. Jalil kept notes in the Tatar language, but after his death the notebook disappeared without a trace.

Musa Jalil's poem "Barbarism"

In Hitler's dungeons, Musa Jalil wrote hundreds of poems, 115 of which reached his descendants. The “Moabite Notebook” cycle is considered the pinnacle of poetic creativity.

These are indeed two miraculously preserved notebooks handed over to the Soviet authorities by the poet’s cellmates in the Moabit and Plötzensee camps. According to unconfirmed information, two more, who somehow fell into the hands of a Turkish citizen, ended up in the NKVD and disappeared there.

On the front line and in the camps, Musa wrote about the war, about the atrocities he witnessed, about the tragedy of the situation and his iron will. These were the poems “Helmet”, “Four Flowers”, “Azimuth”. The piercing lines “They and their children drove away the mothers...” from “Barbarism” eloquently describe the poet’s feelings.

There was a place in Jalil’s soul for lyrics, romanticism and humor, for example, “Love and a Runny Nose” and “Sister Inshar”, “Spring” and dedicated to his wife Amina “Farewell, my smart girl”.

Personal life

Musa Jalil was married more than once. Rouse's first wife gave the poet a son, Albert. He became a career officer, served in Germany, and kept his father’s first book with his autograph all his life. Albert raised two sons, but nothing is known about their fate.

In a civil marriage with Zakiya Sadykova, Musa gave birth to Lucia. The daughter graduated from the conducting department of the music school and the Moscow Institute of Cinematography, lived and taught in Kazan.

The poet's third wife's name was Amina. Although there is information spread on the Internet that according to the documents the woman was listed as either Anna Petrovna or Nina Konstantinovna. The daughter of Amina and Musa Chulpan Zalilova lived in Moscow and worked as an editor in a literary publishing house. Her grandson Mikhail, a talented violinist, bears the double surname Mitrofanov-Jalil.

Death

There would be no front-line or camp pages in Jalil’s biography if the poet had not refused the reservation given to him from military service. Musa came to the military registration and enlistment office on the second day after the start of the war, was assigned as a political instructor, and worked as a military correspondent. In 1942, emerging from encirclement with a detachment of fighters, Jalil was wounded and captured.

In a concentration camp near the Polish city of Radom, Musa joined the Idel-Ural legion. The Nazis gathered highly educated representatives of non-Slavic nations into detachments with the goal of raising supporters and disseminators of fascist ideology.

Jalil, taking advantage of relative freedom of movement, launched subversive activities in the camp. The underground members were preparing to escape, but there was a traitor in their ranks. The poet and his most active associates were executed by guillotine.

Participation in the Wehrmacht unit gave reason to consider Musa Jalil a traitor Soviet people. Only after death, thanks to the efforts of both the Tatar scientist and public figure Gazi Kashshafa revealed the truth about the tragic and at the same time heroic recent years poet's life.

Bibliography

1925 – “We Are Coming”
1929 – “Comrades”
1934 – “Order-bearing millions”
1955 – “Heroic Song”
1957 – “The Moabit Notebook”
1964 – “Musa Jalil. Selected Lyrics"
1979 – “Musa Jalil. Selected Works"
1981 – “Red Daisy”
1985 – “The Nightingale and the Spring”
2014 – “Musa Jalil. Favorites"

Quotes

I know: with life, the dream will go away.

But with victory and happiness

She will dawn in my country,

No one has the power to hold back the dawn!

We will forever glorify that woman whose name is Mother.

Our youth imperiously dictates to us: “Seek!”

And storms of passions carry us around.

It was not the feet of men who paved the roads,

And the feelings and passions of people.

Why be surprised, dear doctor?

Helps our health

The best medicine of wondrous power,

What is called love.

June 25, 1941, just the third day of the Great Patriotic War Soviet aviation launched an air counterattack to destroy fascist aircraft based at Finnish airfields

Before telling you, dear readers, about the famous Tatar poet and publicist, Hero of the Soviet Union, laureate (posthumously) of the Lenin Prize Musa Jalil ((Musa Mustafaevich Zalilov), allow me a small digression.

The greatness of Russia, its power and strength are determined not only and not so much by the endless expanses, inexhaustible mineral resources, space achievements, military victories and other state attributes, but, above all, by the peoples inhabiting one seventh of the Earth. Not a single empire, not a single multinational country in the world, either in the past or in the present, can oppose Russia to a wiser and more balanced national policy. From hoary antiquity to the present day. For many years it was argued that the tsarist empire was a “prison of nations.” In fact, “damned tsarism” did not lose a single nation on its centuries-long path, even the smallest one, that stood under its banner. Moreover, if not military power Russian Empire, then many Central Asian, Caucasian, Baltic peoples, and the same, now “Bandera” Ukraine, would have long been erased from the world map, and we would have forgotten their name. Well, who will remember the Ubykhs now? But there was the most militant million-strong people of the Caucasus, who went to Ottoman Turkey. Now there is not a single Ubykh. Dissolved, disappeared in the abyss of Ottoman expansion. This has never happened in Russia. Here is a stunning, albeit little-known example of the creative loyalty and devotion of other peoples to the Russian fatherland. These peoples understood perfectly well: without Russia they would never exist.

So, in 1807, the St. George Cross was established - a reward for military merit and courage shown against the enemy. For Muslims it was proposed to establish the Gergiev Crescent. The proposal did not pass among the Muslims themselves. Then, in general, a special sign was installed for non-believers, where in the center of the medallion on both sides the coat of arms of Russia was depicted - a double-headed eagle. This badge was even awarded to 1,368 soldiers, but then they abandoned it too. Russian soldiers of different faiths, in mortal danger, wanted to feel “like everyone else” - Russians and receive only the St. George Cross from their homeland.

The Bolsheviks, now reviled in every possible way, went even further in their creative national - no, still international policy. Its essence was the birth and establishment of the Soviet people, who alone in the entire globe managed to stop and destroy the brown plague of the twentieth century - fascism. No one else could achieve such a feat. So here it is brightest star in the greatest constellation of the Soviet people was my Tatar hero Musa Jalil. His amazingly fantastic life, struggle, creativity and death are worthy of both our admiration and our grateful memory.

...The small Tatar village of Mustafino was lost in the endless expanses of the Orenburg steppes. In winter there are severe frosts and giant snowdrifts, and in summer there is unbearable heat. It was in that village that Musa, the sixth child, was born. When the boy was seven years old, the parents of Mustafa and Rakhim Zalilov (the Tatar sound “zh” is written as “z” and “j”) sent him to the Orenburg madrasah (literal translation - “place where they teach”) “Khusainiya”. There, in addition to compulsory theology, secular disciplines were also taught: literature, drawing, singing. Although the boy studied very diligently, he always looked forward to the holidays like manna from heaven. At home he had complete freedom: he went out at night and swam for a long time in the Net River. And in the long evenings I listened with delight to the drawn-out Tatar songs, which my mother sang superbly and the bewitching fairy tales of my grandmother Gilmi. That’s when the boy’s poetic spark flared up. Years will pass and he will write: “Eh, my grandmother’s fairy tales, / It’s not for you to compete with the truth! / To tell about the terrible things, / What words will I turn to?”

At the age of thirteen, Musa joined the Komsomol. And at the age of fifteen he fights with the Cossacks of Ataman Dutov. Then he begins to seriously try his hand at poetry: “If I took a saber, if I rushed with it, / Defending the Red Front, sweeping away the rich. / If there was a place for me in the line of friends, / If I could cut down executioners with a dashing saber.”

The young man’s first poetic work was published in 1919 by the military newspaper “Kyzyl Yoldyz” (“Red Star”). Six years later, Musa Jalil’s first collection was published in Kazan. It contains poems and the poem “Barabyz” (“We are coming”). After the end of the civil war, Musa Jalil actively participated in the organization of the first pioneer detachments, writing children's poems and plays. He is elected a member of the Bureau of the Tatar-Bashkir section of the Komsomol Central Committee and is sent to study in Moscow. Musa enters the philological faculty of Moscow State University. And he continues to write poetry in his native language. Their translations are read to students at university evenings. (“I would consider this death in battle happiness, / I sing the glory of heroic death in song. / Friend, worker, take a rifle and go on a campaign! / Give your life, if necessary, for your will.”)

With a university diploma, Jalil is sent to Kazan. Here he gives himself completely creative work And social activities. In 1931-1932 he edited Tatar children's magazines published under the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Since 1933, he has worked as head of the literature and art department of the Tatar newspaper Kommunist, published in Moscow. Then he meets Soviet poets A. Zharov, A. Bezymensky, M. Svetlov. In 1934, two of them were published at once. poetry collection: “Order-bearing millions” on a Komsomol theme and “Poems and Poems”. In 1939-1941, Musa Jalil was the executive secretary of the Writers' Union of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and at the same time the head of the literary part of the Tatar Opera Studio at the Moscow Conservatory. When the question of creating a national opera theater arose, Musa rushed headlong into a new business. He looked for singers and librettists, carried on extensive correspondence with Tatar poets and playwrights, attended rehearsals and arranged the everyday life of the actors. At the same time, Jalil translated dozens of songs, romances, and opera librettos into Tatar. He also writes original opera librettos. N. Zhiganov’s opera “Altynchech” based on his libretto was included in the Golden Fund of Soviet opera art. In the summer of 1939, an opera house opened in Kazan. Musa continues to work there as the head of the literary department. By this time, Jalil's literary creativity was reaching its peak. He writes plays, epic poems, songs, and critical articles with equal success. But, perhaps, Musa’s talent was most fully revealed in lyric poems. Jalil finally emerged as a lyric poet. His poems attract with their purity and sincerity. His translations into Tatar of Pushkin, Nekrasov, Shevchenko, and other national poets become Tatar classics. All this contributes to the creative maturity of the poet. Critic S. Gamalov, reviewing a book of Jalil’s poems published in Moscow translated into Russian, called it the clearest example of the ideological and artistic growth of Tatar poetry and expressed confidence that “a small book of poems by Musa Jalil will bring great joy to the Soviet reader with its genuine poetry, combining iron will with soft lyricism, great anger with tender love.” Musa Jalil was elected chairman of the Writers' Union of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and deputy of the city council. As a writer he works in almost all literary genres: writes songs, poems, plays, journalism, collects material for a novel about the Komsomol. Based on his poems “Altyn Chech” (“Golden-haired”) and “Ildar”, composer N.G. Zhiganov wrote operas. The last of them was awarded the Stalin Prize.

Without any exaggeration, we can say: by the end of the thirties, Musa Jalil was at the zenith of his creative and social glory. And then the Great One struck Patriotic War. The first writer of Tataria did not need to make any efforts to remain in the rear in party or government work. The leadership of the Tatar Autonomous Republic persistently suggested this to him. However, the poet was uncontrollably eager to go to the front and achieved his goal. He then fought on the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts, and was a correspondent for the newspaper “Courage”. In June 1942, during the Lyuban operation Soviet troops Musa Jalil was seriously wounded in the chest and was captured unconscious.

...It is necessary to write separately and in detail about how the Germans created the Idel-Ural legion, where they assigned captive natives of the Volga region and the Urals. This topic is more than complicated and painful. But we will only dwell on the fact that in parallel with the formation of the legion (it was stationed in the Polish village of Edlinsk), a Tatar underground led by officer Gainan Kurmashev also arose in it. This military organization set as its goal ideologically to disintegrate and blow up the legion from the inside, to prepare legionnaires for escape, for an uprising, for going over to their own side. The Tatar underground fighters had at their disposal the printing house of the newspaper “Idel-Ural,” which the Nazis and emigrant circles began publishing for legionnaires in the fall of 1942. Kurmashev had ten closest assistants: Musa Jalil, Abdulla Alish, Fuat Saifulmulyukov, Fuat Bulatov, Garif Shabaev, Akhmet Simaev, Abdulla Battalov, Zinnat Khasanov, Akhat Atnashev, Salim Bukharov. All of them carried out specific instructions from headquarters. Specifically, Musa Jalil traveled to military camps to conduct cultural and educational work. He established secret connections with other underground workers. Under the guise of selecting amateur artists for the choir created in the legion, he recruited new members of the underground organization. The poet was also associated with an underground organization called the Berlin Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, headed by Colonel Nikolai Stepanovich Bushmanov.

Again, without going into details, we can safely say: as a result of the activities of the Tatar underground, the legion battalions within the Wehrmacht did not complete the tasks that the German command set for them. And this is a considerable merit of Musa Jalil. So the 825th battalion was sent on February 14, 1943 to fight the partisans. Already on February 21, representatives of the legion contacted the Belarusian partisans. Although the plot was discovered by the Germans, on February 22, most of the battalion went over to the side of the partisans with weapons in their hands. The 826th Battalion was formed on January 15, 1943, but after the uprising of the 825th Battalion it was transferred to Holland for security duty. Did not take part in hostilities. The 827th battalion was located in Western Ukraine, where it operated against Kovpak’s partisans. The legionnaires did not show much zeal in battle. Most ran over to the partisans. In 1943, an uprising was being prepared, which the Germans managed to uncover in time. The leader of the uprising, Senior Lieutenant Miftakhov, was executed. The 827th battalion was also redeployed to the West. Most of the legionnaires went over to the side of the French Resistance. 828th battalion. It was formed and sent to Western Ukraine instead of the disbanded 827th. However, this unit also disappointed the Germans. Legionnaires fled en masse to the partisans. Subsequently, the battalion was transferred from Ukraine, and its traces were lost.

German counterintelligence discovered traces of the activities of the Tatar underground through an ordinary defect in one typewriter letter. Most of the underground workers in Berlin were arrested on the night of August 11-12, 1943, when they were listening to a radio message from Mainland. In the editorial office of the newspaper “Idel-Ural” Simaev, Alisha, Bulatova Shabaev were seized. In total, forty people from the underground were imprisoned. A provocateur reported on Jalil. As the most dangerous criminal, Musa was handed over to the Gestapo. They put him in solitary confinement in the Berlin Moabit prison. Neither cruel torture nor promises of freedom, life and prosperity broke his will and devotion to his homeland.

In prison dungeons, the fiery anti-fascist poet created 115 poetic works. Here is just one of them: “If they bring you news about me, / They will say: “He is tired, he is behind, he has fallen,” / Don’t believe it, dear! This is the word/ Friends will not say if they believe in me./ The blood oath calls from the banner:/ Gives me strength, moves me forward./ So do I have the right to get tired and fall behind?/ So do I have the right to fall and not get up?/ If it’s about me They will bring you news, / They will say: “He is a traitor! He betrayed his homeland,” / Don’t believe it, dear! This is the word/ My friends won’t say it if they love me./ I took a machine gun and went to fight,/ To fight for you and for my motherland./ Will you cheat on me? And about my homeland? / But what will remain in my life? / If they bring you news about me, / They will say: “He is dead. Musa is already dead,” - / Don’t believe it, dear! This is the word/ Friends won’t say if they love you./ The cold body will be covered by the earth -/ You can’t cover up the song of fire!/ Die winning, and who will call you dead/ If you were a fighter?!”

These lines, perhaps flawed for some, were written by a man who knew for sure that the guillotine awaited him. There is no analogue of such poetic creativity in the world. Unless Julius Fucik also wrote “Report with a noose around his neck.”

The path to recognition of Musa Jalil in his homeland was long and difficult. In 1946, the USSR MGB opened a search case against Musa Jalil. He was accused of treason and aiding the enemy. A year later, the name of Musa Jalil was included in the list of especially dangerous criminals. And then the former prisoner of war Nigmat Teregulov brought a notebook with sixty poems by Jalil to the Union of Writers of Tatarstan. Some time later, a second notebook by the same poet arrived from the Soviet consulate in Brussels. She was carried out of the Moabit prison by the Belgian resistance member Andre Timmermans. At their last meeting, Musa said that he and a group of his Tatar comrades would soon be executed, and asked to hand over the notebook with prison poems to their homeland. The “Moabit notebook” fell into the hands of the poet Konstantin Simonov, who organized the translation of Jalil’s poems into Russian, removed the slanderous slander against the poet and proved the patriotic activities of his underground group. An article by K. Simonov about Musa Jalil was published in one of the central newspapers in 1953, after which the triumphant “procession” of the feat of the poet and his comrades into the national consciousness began. In 1956 he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and in 1957 he became a laureate of the Lenin Prize.

Earth!.. I wish I could take a break from captivity,
To be in a free draft...
But the walls freeze over the groans,
The heavy door is locked.

Oh, heaven with a winged soul!
I would give so much for a swing!..
But the body is at the bottom of the casemate
And the captive hands are in chains.

How freedom splashes with rain
Into the happy faces of flowers!
But it goes out under the stone vault
The breath of weakening words.

I know - in the arms of the light
Such a sweet moment of life!
But I'm dying...And this—
My last song.

Eleven suicide bombers

On August 25, 1944, in the Berlin Plötzensee prison, 11 members of the Idel-Ural Legion, a unit created by the Nazis from Soviet prisoners of war, primarily Tatars, were executed on charges of treason.

The eleven sentenced to death were assets of an underground anti-fascist organization that managed to disintegrate the legion from within and thwart German plans.

The procedure for execution by guillotine in Germany was debugged to the point of automation - it took the executioners about half an hour to behead the “criminals.” Executors scrupulously recorded the order in which sentences were carried out and even the time of death of each person.

The fifth, at 12:18, lost his life writer Musa Gumerov. Under this name, Musa Mustafovich Zalilov, also known as Musa Jalil, died, a poet whose main poems became known to the world a decade and a half after his death.

In the beginning there was "Happiness"

Musa Jalil was born on February 15, 1906 in the village of Mustafino, Orenburg province, in the family of peasant Mustafa Zalilov.

Musa Jalil in his youth. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Musa was the sixth child in the family. “I first went to the village mekteb (school) to study, and after moving to the city I went to primary classes Madrasah (theological school) “Khusainiya”. When my relatives left for the village, I stayed in the madrasah boarding house,” Jalil wrote in his autobiography. “During these years, Husainiya was far from the same. October Revolution, struggle for Soviet power, its strengthening greatly influenced the madrasah. Inside “Khusainiya” the struggle is intensifying between the children of the bais, mullahs, nationalists, defenders of religion and the sons of the poor, revolutionary-minded youth. I always stood on the side of the latter and in the spring of 1919 I signed up for the newly formed Orenburg Komsomol organization and fought for the spread of Komsomol influence in the madrasah.”

But even before Musa became interested in revolutionary ideas, poetry entered his life. He wrote his first poems, which have not survived, in 1916. And in 1919, in the newspaper “Kyzyl Yoldyz” (“Red Star”), which was published in Orenburg, Jalil’s first poem, called “Happiness,” was published. Since then, Musa's poems have been published regularly.

“Some of us will be missing”

After Civil War Musa Jalil graduated from the workers' school, was engaged in Komsomol work, and in 1927 entered the literary department of the ethnological faculty of Moscow State University. After its reorganization, he graduated from the literary department of Moscow State University in 1931.

Classmates of Jalil, then still Musa Zalilov, noted that at the beginning of his studies he did not speak Russian very well, but he studied with great diligence.

After graduating from the Faculty of Literature, Jalil was the editor of Tatar children's magazines published under the Central Committee of the Komsomol, then head of the literature and art department of the Tatar newspaper "Communist", published in Moscow.

In 1939, Jalil and his family moved to Kazan, where he took the position of executive secretary of the Writers' Union of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

On June 22, 1941, Musa and his family were going to a friend’s dacha. At the station he was overtaken by the news of the beginning of the war.

The trip was not cancelled, but carefree country conversations were replaced by conversations about what awaits everyone ahead.

“After the war, one of us will be missing...,” Jalil told his friends.

Missing

The very next day he went to the military registration and enlistment office with a request to be sent to the front, but they refused and offered to wait for the summons to arrive. The wait did not last long - Jalil was called up on July 13, initially assigning him to an artillery regiment as a mounted reconnaissance officer.

RIA News

At this time, the premiere of the opera “Altynchech” took place in Kazan, the libretto for which was written by Musa Jalil. The writer was put on leave, and he came to the theater in military uniform. After this, the command of the unit found out what kind of fighter was serving with them.

They wanted to demobilize Jalil or leave him in the rear, but he himself resisted attempts to save him: “My place is among the fighters. I must be at the front and beat the fascists."

As a result, at the beginning of 1942, Musa Jalil went to the Leningrad Front as an employee of the front-line newspaper “Courage”. He spent a lot of time on the front line, collecting material necessary for publication, as well as carrying out orders from the command.

In the spring of 1942, senior political instructor Musa Jalil was among the soldiers and commanders of the Second Shock Army who were surrounded by Hitler. On June 26 he was wounded and captured.

How this happened can be learned from the surviving poem by Musa Jalil, one of those written in captivity:

"What to do?
Refused the word pistol friend.
The enemy shackled my half-dead hands,
The dust has covered my bloody trail.”

Apparently, the poet was not going to surrender, but fate decided otherwise.

In his homeland, he was assigned the status of “missing in action” for many years.

Legion "Idel-Ural"

With the rank of political instructor, Musa Jalil could have been shot in the first days of his stay in the camp. However, none of his comrades in misfortune betrayed him.

In the prisoner of war camp there were different people— some lost heart, broke down, while others were eager to continue the fight. From among these, an underground anti-fascist committee was formed, of which Musa Jalil became a member.

The failure of the blitzkrieg and the beginning of a protracted war forced the Nazis to reconsider their strategy. If earlier they relied only on their own strength, now they decided to play " national map", trying to attract representatives of different nations to cooperation. In August 1942, an order was signed to create the Idel-Ural legion. It was planned to be created from among Soviet prisoners of war, representatives of the peoples of the Volga region, primarily the Tatars.

Musa Jalil with his daughter Chulpan. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

The Nazis hoped, with the help of Tatar political emigrants from the Civil War, to educate former prisoners of war into staunch opponents of the Bolsheviks and Jews.

Legionnaire candidates were separated from other prisoners of war, freed from hard work, better fed, and treated.

There was a discussion among the underground - how to relate to what was happening? It was proposed to boycott the invitation to enter the service of the Germans, but the majority spoke in favor of another idea - to join the legion, so that, having received weapons and equipment from the Nazis, they could prepare an uprising within the Idel-Ural.

So Musa Jalil and his comrades “took the path of fighting Bolshevism.”

Underground in the heart of the Third Reich

This was a deadly game. “Writer Gumerov” managed to earn the trust of the new leaders and received the right to engage in cultural and educational work among legionnaires, as well as publish the legion’s newspaper. Jalil, traveling to prisoner-of-war camps, established secret connections and, under the guise of selecting amateur artists for the choir chapel created in the legion, recruited new members of the underground organization.

The efficiency of the underground workers was incredible. The Idel-Ural Legion never became a full-fledged combat unit. His battalions rebelled and went to the partisans, legionnaires deserted in groups and individually, trying to get to the location of the Red Army units. Where the Nazis managed to prevent a direct rebellion, things were also not going well - the German commanders reported that the legion’s fighters were not able to conduct fighting. As a result, legionnaires from the Eastern Front were transferred to the West, where they also did not really prove themselves.

However, the Gestapo was also not asleep. The underground members were identified, and in August 1943, all the leaders of the underground organization, including Musa Jalil, were arrested. This happened just a few days before the start of the general uprising of the Idel-Ural legion.

Poems from fascist dungeons

The underground workers were sent to the dungeons of the Berlin Moabit prison. They interrogated me with passion, using all conceivable and unimaginable types of torture. Beaten and mutilated people were sometimes taken to Berlin, stopping in crowded places. The prisoners were shown a piece of peaceful life, and then returned to prison, where the investigator offered to hand over all accomplices, promising in exchange a life similar to that on the streets of Berlin.

It was very difficult not to break down. Everyone was looking for their own ways to hold on. For Musa Jalil, this method was writing poetry.

Soviet prisoners of war were not entitled to paper for letters, but Jalil was helped by prisoners from other countries who were imprisoned with him. He also tore blank margins from the newspapers that were allowed in prison and sewed them into small notebooks. He recorded his works in them.

The investigator in charge of the case of the underground fighters honestly told Jalil during one of the interrogations that what they did was enough for 10 death sentences, and the best he could hope for was execution. But, most likely, the guillotine awaits them.

Reproduction of the cover of the “Second Maobit Notebook” by the poet Musa Jalil, transferred to the Soviet embassy by the Belgian Andre Timmermans. Photo: RIA Novosti

The underground fighters were sentenced in February 1944, and from that moment on, every day could be their last.

“I will die standing, without asking for forgiveness”

Those who knew Musa Jalil said that he was a very cheerful person. But more than the inevitable execution, in prison he was worried by the thought that in his homeland they would not know what had happened to him, they would not know that he was not a traitor.

He handed over his notebooks, written in Moabit, to his fellow prisoners, those who were not facing the death penalty.

August 25, 1944 underground fighters Musa Jalil, Gainan Kurmashev,Abdullah Alish, Fuat Sayfulmulukov,Fuat Bulatov,Garif Shabaev, Akhmet Simaev, Abdulla Battalov,Zinnat Khasanov, Akhat Atnashev And Salim Bukhalov were executed in Plötzensee prison. The Germans who were present in the prison and saw them in last minutes life, they said that they behaved with amazing dignity. Assistant Warden Paul Duerrhauer said: “I have never seen people go to the place of execution with their heads held high and sing some kind of song.”

No, you're lying, executioner, I won't kneel,
At least throw him in the dungeons, at least sell him as a slave!
I will die standing, without asking for forgiveness,
At least chop my head with an ax!
I'm sorry that I am those who are related to you,
Not a thousand - only a hundred he destroyed.
For this, his people would
I asked for forgiveness on my knees.
Traitor or hero?

Musa Jalil's fears about what people would say about him in his homeland came true. In 1946, the USSR Ministry of State Security opened a search case against him. He was accused of treason and aiding the enemy. In April 1947, the name of Musa Jalil was included in the list of especially dangerous criminals.

The basis for suspicion was German documents, from which it followed that the “writer Gumerov” voluntarily entered the service of the Germans, joining the Idel-Ural legion.

Musa Jalil. Monument in Kazan. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Liza vetta

Musa Jalil's works were banned from publication in the USSR, and the poet's wife was summoned for interrogation. The competent authorities assumed that he could be on the territory of Germany occupied by the Western allies and conduct anti-Soviet activities.

But back in 1945, in Berlin, Soviet soldiers discovered a note from Musa Jalil, in which he talked about how he and his comrades were sentenced to death as an underground worker, and asked to inform his relatives about this. In a roundabout way, through writer Alexander Fadeev, this note reached Jalil's family. But suspicions of treason against him were not removed.

In 1947, a notebook with poems was sent to the USSR from the Soviet consulate in Brussels. These were poems by Musa Jalil, written in Moabit prison. The notebook was taken out of prison the poet's cellmate, Belgian Andre Timmermans. Several more notebooks were donated by former Soviet prisoners of war who were part of the Idel-Ural legion. Some notebooks survived, others then disappeared in the archives of the secret services.

Symbol of Fortitude

As a result, two notebooks containing 93 poems fell into the hands of poet Konstantin Simonov. He organized the translation of poems from Tatar into Russian, combining them into the collection “Moabite Notebook”.

In 1953, on Simonov’s initiative, an article about Musa Jalil was published in the central press, in which all charges of treason were dropped against him. Some poems written by the poet in prison were also published.

Soon the Moabite Notebook was published as a separate book.

By Decree of the Presidium Supreme Council USSR on February 2, 1956, for exceptional tenacity and courage shown in the fight against the Nazi invaders, Zalilov Musa Mustafovich (Musa Jalil) was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously).

In 1957, Musa Jalil was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize for his cycle of poems “The Moabit Notebook.”

The poems of Musa Jalil, translated into 60 languages of the world, are considered an example of great courage and perseverance in the face of the monster, whose name is Nazism. “The Moabit Notebook” is on a par with the “Report with a Noose Around the Neck” by the Czechoslovakian writer and journalist Julius Fucik, who, like Jalil, wrote his main work in Hitler’s dungeons while awaiting execution.

Don't frown, friend,— we are only sparks of life,
We are stars flying in the darkness...
We will go out, but the bright day of the Fatherland
Will rise on our sunny land.

Both courage and loyalty are next to us,
And that's all - what makes our youth strong...
Well, my friend, don't have timid hearts
We will meet death. She's not scary to us.

No, nothing disappears without a trace,
The darkness outside the prison walls does not last forever.
And the young - someday - will know
How we lived and how we died!

Musa Jalil (1906-1944), full name Musa Mustafovich Zalilov (Dzhalilov), is a Soviet poet from Tatarstan, Hero of the Soviet Union (the title was awarded to him posthumously in 1956), and in 1957 he was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize.

Childhood

In the Orenburg region in the Sharlyk district there is a small village of Mustafino. In this place on February 15, 1906 large family a sixth child appeared - a son, who was given the name Musa.

Father Mustafa and mother Rahima with early age taught their children to value work, respect the older generation and do well in school. Musa did not even need to be forced to study at school; he had a special love for knowledge.

He was a very diligent boy in his studies, loved poetry, and expressed his thoughts unusually beautifully, both teachers and parents noticed this.

At first he studied at a village school - mekteb. Then the family moved to Orenburg, and there the young poet was sent to study at the Khusainiya madrasah, after the revolution it educational institution was reorganized into the Tatar Institute of Public Education. Here Musa's talent was revealed in full force. He studied well in all subjects, but literature, singing and drawing were especially easy for him.

Musa wrote his first poems at the age of 10, but, unfortunately, they have not survived to this day.

When Musa was 13 years old, he joined the Komsomol. After the end of the Civil War, he took part in the creation of pioneer detachments and promoted the ideas of pioneering in his poems.

His favorite poets at that time were Omar Khayyam, Hafiz, Saadi, and the Tatar Derdmand. Under the influence of their poetry, he composed his romantic poems:

“Burn, Peace” and “Council”;
“Captured” and “Unanimity”;
“The Throne of Ears” and “Before Death.”

Creative path

Soon Musa Jalil was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Komsomol of the Tatar-Bashkir Bureau. This gave him a chance to go to Moscow and enter a state university. Thus, Musa in 1927 became a student at Moscow State University at the Faculty of Ethnology (later it was renamed the Faculty of Writing), the department was chosen to be literary.

Throughout my studies at higher institution he wrote his beautiful poems in his native language, they were translated and read at poetry evenings. Musa's lyrics were a success.

In 1931, Jalil received a diploma from Moscow State University and was sent to Kazan. Tatar children's magazines were published under the Central Committee of the Komsomol, Musa worked as an editor in them.

In 1932, Musa left for the city of Nadezhdinsk (now called Serov). There he worked hard and hard on his new works. Based on his poems, the famous composer Zhiganov composed the operas “Ildar” and “Altyn Chech”.

In 1933, Jalil returned to the capital, where the Tatar newspaper Kommunist was published, and he headed its literary department. Here he met and became friends with many famous Soviet poets - Zharov, Svetlov, Bezymensky.

In 1934, two collections of Jalil, “Poems and Poems” and “Order-Bearing Millions” (dedicated to the theme of the Komsomol), were published. He worked a lot with poetic youth, thanks to Musa such Tatar poets as Absalyamov and Alish received a start in life.

From 1939 to 1941 he worked as an executive secretary at the Writers' Union of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and also headed the literary department at the Tatar Opera House.

War

On a Sunday morning in June, so clear and sunny, Musa had to go with his family to his friends’ dacha. They were standing on the platform, waiting for the train, when the radio announced that the war had begun.

When they arrived outside the city and got off at the right station, his friends joyfully greeted Musa with smiles and waved their hands from afar. No matter how much he wanted to do this, he had to convey the terrible news about the war. The friends spent the whole day together and did not go to bed until the morning. Parting, Jalil said: “After the war, some of us will no longer exist...”

The next morning he appeared at the military registration and enlistment office with a statement to send him to the front. But they didn’t take Musa away right away; they told everyone to wait their turn. The summons arrived to Jalil on July 13. An artillery regiment was just being formed in Tataria, and that’s where it ended up. From there he was sent to the town of Menzelinsk, where for six months he studied at courses for political instructors.

When the command learned that Musa Jalil - famous poet, deputy of the city council, former chairman of the Writers' Union, they wanted to demobilize him and send him to the rear. But he answered decisively: “Please understand me, because I am a poet! I cannot sit in the rear and from there call people to defend the Motherland. “I must be at the front, among the fighters and together with them beat the fascist evil spirits.”.

For some time he was in reserve at army headquarters in the small town of Malaya Vishera. He often went on business trips to the front line, performing special assignments command, as well as collecting the necessary material for the newspaper “Courage”, for which he worked as a correspondent. Sometimes he had to walk 30 km a day.

If the poet had free minutes, he wrote poetry. In the most difficult everyday life at the front, such wonderful people were born lyrical works:

"Death of a Girl" and "Tear";
“Goodbye, my clever girl” and “Trace”.

Musa Jalil said: “I’m still writing front-line lyrics. And I’ll do great things after our victory, if I’m alive.”.

Those who happened to be close to the senior political instructor of Leningrad and Volkhov fronts Musa Jalil, we were amazed at how this man could always maintain restraint and calm. Even in the most difficult conditions, being surrounded, when there was not a single sip of water or crackers left, he taught his fellow soldiers to express the sap from a birch tree and find edible herbs and berries.

In a letter to a friend, he wrote about “The Ballad of the Last Cartridge.” Unfortunately, the world never recognized this work. Most likely, the poem was about the only cartridge that the political instructor kept for himself in the worst case. But the poet’s fate turned out differently.

Captivity

In June 1942, fighting his way out of encirclement with other officers and soldiers, Musa fell into Nazi encirclement and was seriously wounded in the chest. He was unconscious and fell into German captivity. IN Soviet army From that moment on, Jalil was considered missing, but in fact, his long wanderings through German prisons and camps began.

Here he especially understood what front-line camaraderie and brotherhood were. The Nazis killed the sick and wounded and looked for Jews and political instructors among the prisoners. Jalil’s comrades supported him in every possible way, no one revealed that he was a political instructor; when he was wounded, he was literally carried from camp to camp, and during hard work they deliberately left him as an orderly in the barracks.

Having recovered from his wound, Musa provided all possible help and support to his camp comrades; he shared the last piece of bread with those in need. But most importantly, with a stub of a pencil on scraps of paper, Jalil wrote poems and read them to prisoners in the evenings; patriotic poetry about the Motherland helped prisoners survive all the humiliation and difficulties.

Musa wanted to be useful to his homeland even here in fascist camps Spandau, Moabit, Plötzensee. He created an underground organization in a camp near Radom in Poland.

After the defeat at Stalingrad, the Nazis conceived the idea of creating a legion of Soviet prisoners of war of non-Russian nationality, thinking that they could persuade them to cooperate. The underground prisoners of war agreed to participate in the legion. But when they were sent to the front, near Gomel, they turned their weapons against the Germans and sided with the Belarusians partisan detachments.

In conclusion, the Germans appointed Musa Jalil responsible for cultural and educational work. He had to travel to the camps. Taking advantage of the moment, he recruited more and more people into the underground organization. He was even able to establish connections with underground fighters from Berlin under the leadership of N. S. Bushmanov.

At the end of the summer of 1943, underground workers were preparing the escape of many prisoners. But a traitor was found, someone revealed the plans of the underground organization. The Germans arrested Jalil. Because he was a participant and organizer of the underground, the Germans executed him on August 25, 1944. The execution took place in Berlin's Plötzensee prison using a guillotine.

Personal life

Musa Jalil had three wives.

With his first wife, Rauza Khanum, they had a son, Albert Zalilov. Musa loved his first and only boy very much. Albert wanted to be a military pilot. However, due to an eye disease, he was unable to pass the medical examination at the school where he entered fighter aviation.

Then Albert became a cadet at the Saratov Military School, after which he was sent to serve in the Caucasus.

In 1976, Albert appealed to the high command with a request to send him to serve in Germany. They went to meet him halfway. He served there for 12 years, during which time he studied in detail the Berlin resistance movement, with which his father was associated, and collected materials about the underground.

Albert was only three months old when Musa Jalil's first book was published. The poet gave this collection to his son and left his autograph there. Albert kept his father's gift for the rest of his life.

Albert has two sons, the blood of Musa Jalil’s grandfather flows in their veins, which means the line of the great poet is continued.

Musa's second wife was Zakiya Sadykova, she gave birth to a beautiful and gentle girl, Lucia, so similar to her father.

Lucia and her mother lived in Tashkent, after graduating from school, she became a student at the music school in the department of vocals and choral conducting. Then she graduated in Moscow state institute cinematography and always wanted to make a film about my dad. As an assistant director, she managed to take part in the filming documentary film"Moabite Notebook".

Musa's third wife Amina khanum gave birth to his daughter Chulpan. They were the main contenders for cultural heritage the great poet, but in 1954 the court divided everything equally - Alberta, Lucia, Chulpan and Amina khanum. Chulpan Zalilova, about 40 years old, also, like her father, gave literary activity, she worked in the editorial office of “Russian Classics” publishing house “ Fiction" Every year on Musa’s birthday, Chulpan with her daughter and two grandchildren (Mikhail Mitorofanov-Jalil and Elizaveta Malysheva) come to the poet’s homeland in Kazan.

Confession

In 1946, a search case was opened against the poet in the Soviet Union on charges of treason and collaboration with the Nazis. In 1947, he was included in the list of especially dangerous criminals.

In 1946, former prisoner of war Teregulov Nigmat came to the Writers' Union of Tatarstan and handed over a notebook with poems by Musa Jalil, which the poet entrusted to him, and he was able to take it out of the German camp. A year later, in Brussels, a second notebook with Jalil’s poems was handed over to the Soviet consulate. Andre Timmermans, a resistance member from Belgium, managed to remove the priceless notebook from the Moabit prison. He saw the poet before his execution, he asked him to send poems to his homeland.

During the years of imprisonment, Musa wrote 115 poems. These notebooks, which his comrades were able to carry out, were transferred to their homeland and are stored in the state museum of the Republic of Tatarstan.

Poems from Moabit fell into the hands of the right person- poet Konstantin Simonov. He organized their translation into Russian and proved to the whole world the patriotism of the political group led by Musa Jalil, organized right under the noses of the fascists, in camps and prisons. Simonov wrote an article about Musa, which was published in 1953 in one of the Soviet newspapers. The slander against Jalil was put to an end, and a triumphant awareness of the poet’s feat began throughout the country.

Memory

In Kazan, on Gorky Street, in a residential building from where Musa Jalil went to the front, a museum has been opened.

A village in Tatarstan, an academic opera and ballet theater in Kazan, many streets and avenues in all cities of the former Soviet Union, schools, libraries, cinemas and even a small planet are named after the poet.

It’s just a pity that the books of the poet Musa Jalil are now practically not published, and his poems are not included in school curriculum, they are taken in extracurricular reading.

Although the poems “Barbarism” and “Stockings” should be studied at school along with the “Primer” and the multiplication table. Before the execution, the Nazis herded everyone in front of the pit and forced them to undress. The three-year-old girl looked the German straight in the eyes and asked: “Uncle, should I take off my stockings?” Goosebumps, and it seems that in one small poem all the pain of the Soviet people who survived the horrors of war is collected. And how deeply the great and talented poet Musa Jalil conveyed this pain.

Oh, heaven with a winged soul!
I would give so much for a swing!..
But the body is at the bottom of the casemate
And the captive hands are in chains.

How freedom splashes with rain
Into the happy faces of flowers!
But it goes out under the stone vault
The breath of weakening words.

I know - in the arms of the light
Such a sweet moment of life!
But I'm dying...And this-
My last song.

Eleven suicide bombers

The eleven sentenced to death were assets of an underground anti-fascist organization that managed to disintegrate the legion from within and thwart German plans.

The procedure for execution by guillotine in Germany was debugged to the point of automation - it took the executioners about half an hour to behead the “criminals”. Executors scrupulously recorded the order in which sentences were carried out and even the time of death of each person.

In the beginning there was "Happiness"

Musa Jalil was born on February 15, 1906 in the village of Mustafino, Orenburg province, in the family of peasant Mustafa Zalilov.

Musa Jalil in his youth. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Musa was the sixth child in the family. “I first went to study at the village mekteb (school), and after moving to the city I went to the primary classes of the Husainiya madrasah (theological school). When my relatives left for the village, I stayed in the madrasah boarding house,” Jalil wrote in his autobiography. “In these years, Husainiya was far from the same. The October Revolution, the struggle for Soviet power, and its strengthening greatly influenced the madrasah. Inside “Khusainiya” the struggle is intensifying between the children of the bais, mullahs, nationalists, defenders of religion and the sons of the poor, revolutionary-minded youth. I always stood on the side of the latter and in the spring of 1919 I signed up for the newly formed Orenburg Komsomol organization and fought for the spread of Komsomol influence in the madrasah.”

“Some of us will be missing”

After the Civil War, Musa Jalil graduated from the workers' school, was engaged in Komsomol work, and in 1927 entered the literary department of the ethnological faculty of Moscow State University. After its reorganization, he graduated from the literary department of Moscow State University in 1931.

Classmates of Jalil, then still Musa Zalilov, noted that at the beginning of his studies he did not speak Russian very well, but he studied with great diligence.

In 1939, Jalil and his family moved to Kazan, where he took the position of executive secretary of the Writers' Union of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

On June 22, 1941, Musa and his family were going to a friend’s dacha. At the station he was overtaken by the news of the beginning of the war.

The trip was not cancelled, but carefree country conversations were replaced by conversations about what awaits everyone ahead.

After the war, one of us will be missing...,” Jalil told his friends.

Missing

Musa Jalil with his daughter Chulpak. Photo: RIA Novosti

At this time, the premiere of the opera “Altynchech” took place in Kazan, the libretto for which was written by Musa Jalil. The writer was released, and he came to the theater in military uniform. After this, the command of the unit found out what kind of fighter was serving with them.

They wanted to demobilize Jalil or leave him in the rear, but he himself resisted attempts to save him: “My place is among the fighters. I must be at the front and beat the fascists."

In the spring of 1942, senior political instructor Musa Jalil was among the soldiers and commanders of the Second Shock Army who were surrounded by Hitler. On June 26 he was wounded and captured.

How this happened can be learned from the surviving poem by Musa Jalil, one of those written in captivity:

"What to do?
Refused the word pistol friend.
The enemy shackled my half-dead hands,
The dust has covered my bloody trail.”

Apparently, the poet was not going to surrender, but fate decided otherwise.

In his homeland, he was assigned the status of “missing in action” for many years.

Legion "Idel-Ural"

With the rank of political instructor, Musa Jalil could have been shot in the first days of his stay in the camp. However, none of his comrades in misfortune betrayed him.

There were different people in the prisoner of war camp - some lost heart, broke down, and others were eager to continue the fight. From among these, an underground anti-fascist committee was formed, of which Musa Jalil became a member.

The failure of the blitzkrieg and the beginning of a protracted war forced the Nazis to reconsider their strategy. If earlier they relied only on their own strengths, now they decided to play the “national card”, trying to attract representatives of different nations to cooperate. In August 1942, an order was signed to create the Idel-Ural legion. It was planned to be created from among Soviet prisoners of war, representatives of the peoples of the Volga region, primarily the Tatars.

Musa Jalil with his daughter Chulpak. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

The Nazis hoped, with the help of Tatar political emigrants from the Civil War, to educate former prisoners of war into staunch opponents of the Bolsheviks and Jews.

Legionnaire candidates were separated from other prisoners of war, freed from hard work, better fed, and treated.

So Musa Jalil and his comrades “took the path of fighting Bolshevism.”

Underground in the heart of the Third Reich

The efficiency of the underground workers was incredible. The Idel-Ural Legion never became a full-fledged combat unit. His battalions rebelled and went to the partisans, legionnaires deserted in groups and individually, trying to get to the location of the Red Army units. Where the Nazis managed to prevent a direct rebellion, things were also not going well - German commanders reported that the legion's fighters were not able to conduct combat operations. As a result, legionnaires from the Eastern Front were transferred to the West, where they also did not really prove themselves.

Poems from fascist dungeons

It was very difficult not to break down. Everyone was looking for their own ways to hold on. For Musa Jalil, this method was writing poetry.

Reproduction of the cover of the “Second Maobit Notebook” by the poet Musa Jalil, transferred to the Soviet embassy by the Belgian Andre Timmermans. Photo: RIA Novosti

The underground fighters were sentenced in February 1944, and from that moment on, every day could be their last.

“I will die standing, without asking for forgiveness”

He handed over his notebooks, written in Moabit, to his fellow prisoners, those who were not facing the death penalty.

August 25, 1944 underground fighters Musa Jalil, Gainan Kurmashev,Abdullah Alish, Fuat Sayfulmulukov,Fuat Bulatov,Garif Shabaev, Akhmet Simaev, Abdulla Battalov,Zinnat Khasanov, Akhat Atnashev And Salim Bukhalov were executed in Plötzensee prison. The Germans who were present in prison and saw them in the last minutes of their lives said that they behaved with amazing dignity. Assistant Warden Paul Duerrhauer said: “I have never seen people go to the place of execution with their heads held high and sing some kind of song.”

No, you're lying, executioner, I won't kneel,
At least throw him in the dungeons, at least sell him as a slave!
I will die standing, without asking for forgiveness,
At least chop my head with an ax!
I'm sorry that I am those who are related to you,
Not a thousand - only a hundred destroyed.
For this, his people would
I asked for forgiveness on my knees.
Traitor or hero?

The basis for suspicion was German documents, from which it followed that the “writer Gumerov” voluntarily entered the service of the Germans, joining the Idel-Ural legion.

Musa Jalil. Monument in Kazan. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org/ Liza vetta

Symbol of Fortitude

Soon the Moabite Notebook was published as a separate book.

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated February 2, 1956, for the exceptional steadfastness and courage shown in the fight against the Nazi invaders, Zalilov Musa Mustafovich (Musa Jalil) was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously).

In 1957, Musa Jalil was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize for his cycle of poems “The Moabit Notebook.”

Don't frown, friend,- we are only sparks of life,
We are stars flying in the darkness...
We will go out, but the bright day of the Fatherland
Will rise on our sunny land.

Both courage and loyalty are next to us,
And that’s all why our youth is strong...
Well, my friend, don't have timid hearts
We will meet death. She's not scary to us.

No, nothing disappears without a trace,
The darkness outside the prison walls does not last forever.
And the young - someday - will know
How we lived and how we died!