The legendary life and courageous death of Musa Jalil.
The legendary poet Musa Jalil is a truly outstanding, talented writer, known throughout Russia. His work is the basis for modern youth, brought up on the principles of patriotism.
Musa Mustafovich Zalilov (known as Musa Jalil) was born on February 2, 1906 in the small village of Mustafino, in the Orenburg region, into the poor family of Mustafa and Rakhima Zalilov. Musa was the sixth child in the large Zalilov family, so his desire for work and respect for the older generation manifested itself from an early age. It was then that my love for learning manifested itself. He studied very diligently, loved poetry and expressed his thoughts with unusual beauty. The parents decided to send the young poet to the Khusainiya madrasah in the city of Orenburg. There Musa Jalil's talent was finally revealed. He easily studied all subjects in the madrasah, but literature, drawing, and singing were especially easy for him.
At the age of thirteen, Musa joined the Komsomol, and after the civil war ended, he created many pioneer detachments, in which he easily promoted the ideology of the pioneers through his poems. A little later, Musa Jalil becomes a member of the Bureau of the Tatar-Bashkir section of the Central Committee of the Komsomol, after which he has a unique opportunity to go to Moscow and enter Moscow State University. In 1927, Musa Jalil entered the ethnological faculty of Moscow State University (hereinafter referred to as the writing faculty), ending up in the literary department. Throughout his studies, Musa writes very interesting poems, participates in poetry evenings, and in 1931 the poet graduates from the university. After graduating from university, Jalila works as an editor for a magazine in the Tatar language for children.
In 1932, Jalil moved to the city of Serov and worked there on many new works; operas by the famous composer Zhiganov were written based on them. Among these are the operas “Altyn Chech” and “Ildar”.
After some time, Musa Jalil returns to Moscow again, where he connects his life with the Kommunist newspaper. This is how the war period of his work begins, certainly associated with the Great Patriotic War. In the first six-month period of his stay in the army, the poet is sent to the city of Menzelinsk, where he receives the rank of senior political instructor and easily enters the active line of the Leningrad Front, and then the Volkhov Front. Among armed attacks, shelling and heroic deeds, the poet simultaneously collects materials for the newspaper “Courage”. In 1942, near the village of Myasnoy Bor, Musa Jalil was wounded and captured by the enemy. There, despite the difficult situation, the terrible attitude towards people from the enemy, bullying, the Tatar poet finds the strength to preserve his patriotic principles. In the German camp, the poet will come up with a false name for himself - Musa Gumerov, thereby deceiving the enemy. But he fails to deceive his fans; even on enemy territory, in the Nazi camp, he is recognized. Musa Jalil was imprisoned in Moabit, Spandau, Pletzensee, and in Poland near the city of Radom. In a camp near the city of Radom, the poet decides to organize an underground organization against the enemy, promotes the victory of the Soviet people, writes poems on this topic and short slogans. And then an escape from the enemy camp was organized.
The Nazis proposed a plan for prisoners, the Germans hoped that the peoples living in the Volga region would rebel against Soviet power. It was hoped that the Tatar nation, the Bashkir nation, the Mordovian nation, the Chuvash nation would form the nationalist detachment “Idel-Ural” and form a wave of negativity against the Soviet regime. Musa Jalil agreed to such an adventure in order to deceive the Nazis. Jalil created a specialized underground detachment, which later went against the Germans. After this situation, the Nazis abandoned this unsuccessful idea. The months the Tatar poet spent in the Spandau Concentration Camp turned out to be fatal. Someone reported that an escape from the camp in which Musa was the organizer was being prepared. He was locked in solitary confinement, tortured for a long time, and then sentenced to death. On August 25, 1944, the famous Tatar poet was murdered in Plötzensee.
The famous poet Konstantin Simonov played a major role in the work of Musa Jalil. He published and translated Jalil's poems, which were written in the Moabit Notebook. Before his death, Jalil managed to transfer the manuscripts to fellow Belgian Andre Timmermans, who, upon his release from the camp, handed over the notebook to the consul, and it was delivered to the homeland of the Tatar poet. In 1953, these poems were first published in the Tatar language, and a couple of years later - in Russian. Today, Musa Jalil is known throughout Russia and far beyond its borders, streets are named after him, films are made about him, his works are loved by both children and adults.
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 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. “During 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.”
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 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.
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 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."
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.
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 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 - 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.
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 members 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 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 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 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.”
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 was born in the village of Mustafino, Orenburg province, into a large family on February 15, 1906. His real name is Musa Mustafovich Zalilov; he came up with his pseudonym during his school years, when he published a newspaper for his classmates. His parents, Mustafa and Rakhima Zalilov, lived poorly, Musa was already their sixth child, and in the meantime there was famine and devastation in Orenburg. Mustafa Zalilov seemed to those around him to be kind, flexible, and reasonable, and his wife Rakhima was strict with children, illiterate, but having wonderful vocal abilities. At first, the future poet studied at an ordinary local school, where he was distinguished by his special talent, curiosity and unique success in the speed of obtaining education. From an early age, a love of reading was instilled in him, but since there was not enough money for books, he made them by hand, independently, writing in them things he heard or invented, and at the age of 9 he began writing poetry. In 1913, his family moved to Orenburg, where Musa entered a religious educational institution - the Khusainiya madrasah, where he began to more effectively develop his abilities. At the madrasah, Jalil studied not only religious disciplines, but also those common to all other schools, such as music, literature, and drawing. During his studies, Musa learned to play a plucked string musical instrument - the mandolin.
Since 1917, unrest and lawlessness began in Orenburg, Musa became imbued with what was happening and devoted time to creating poems. He joins the Communist Youth League to participate in the Civil War, but does not pass the selection due to his asthenic, thin physique. Against the backdrop of urban disasters, Musa's father goes bankrupt, and because of this he goes to prison, as a result of which he falls ill with typhus and dies. Musa's mother does dirty work in order to somehow feed the family. Subsequently, the poet joins the Komsomol, whose instructions he carries out with great restraint, responsibility and courage. In 1921, a time of famine began in Orenburg, Musa's two brothers died, and he himself became a homeless child. He is saved from starvation by an employee of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, who helps him enter the Orenburg Military Party School, and then the Tatar Institute of Public Education.
Since 1922, Musa began to live in Kazan, where he studied at the workers' faculty, actively participated in the activities of the Komsomol, organized various creative meetings for young people, and devoted a lot of time to creating literary works. In 1927, the Komsomol organization sent Jalil to Moscow, where he studied at the philological department of Moscow State University, pursued a poetic and journalistic career, and managed the literary area of the Tatar opera studio. In Moscow, Musa finds his personal life, becomes a husband and father, and in 1938 he moves with his family and opera studio to Kazan, where he begins working at the Tatar Opera House, and a year later he already holds the positions of chairman of the Writers' Union of the Tatar Republic and a deputy of the city council.
In 1941, Musa Jalil went to the front as a war correspondent, in 1942 he was seriously wounded in the chest and captured by the Nazis. To continue to fight the enemy, he becomes a member of the German legion "Idel-Ural", in which he served as the selection of prisoners of war to create entertainment events for the Nazis. Taking this opportunity, he created an underground group within the legion, and in the process of selecting prisoners of war, he recruited new members of his secret organization. His underground group tried to start an uprising in 1943, as a result of which more than five hundred captured Komsomol members were able to join the Belarusian partisans. In the summer of the same year, Jalil’s underground group was discovered, and its founder Musa was executed by beheading in the fascist prison of Plötzensee on August 25, 1944.
Creation
Musa Jalil created his first known works in the period from 1918 to 1921. These include poems, plays, stories, recordings of examples of folk tales, songs and legends. Many of them were never published. The first publication in which his work appeared was the newspaper "Red Star", which included his works of a democratic, liberation, folk character. In 1929, he finished writing the poem "Traveled Paths", and in the twenties his first collection of poems and poems also appeared "Barabyz", and in 1934 two more were published - "Ordered Millions" and "Poems and Poems". Four years later, he wrote the poem “The Letter Bearer,” which tells the story of Soviet youth. In general, the leading themes of the poet’s work were revolution, socialism and civil war.
But the main monument of Musa Jalil’s creativity was the “Moabit Notebook” - the contents of two small notebooks written by Musa before his death in the Moabit prison. Of these, only two have survived, containing a total of 93 poems. They are written in different graphics, in one notebook in Arabic, and in the other in Latin, each in the Tatar language. For the first time, poems from the “Moabit Notebook” saw the light of day after the death of I.V. Stalin in the Literary Gazette, since for a long time after the end of the war the poet was considered a deserter and a criminal. The translation of the poems into Russian was initiated by war correspondent and writer Konstantin Simonov. Thanks to his thorough participation in the consideration of Musa’s biography, the poet ceased to be perceived negatively and was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, as well as the Lenin Prize. The Moabite Notebook has been translated into more than sixty world languages.
Musa Jalil is a model of endurance, a symbol of patriotism and the unbreakable spirit of creativity despite any hardships and sentences. With his life and work, he showed that poetry is higher and more powerful than any ideology, and strength of character is capable of overcoming any hardships and disasters. “The Moabit Notebook” is his testament to his descendants, which says that man is mortal, but art is eternal.
Musa Jalil was born on February 2, 1906 in the village of Mustafino, Orenburg Region, into a Tatar family. Education in the biography of Musa Jalil was received at the madrasah (Muslim educational institution) “Khusainiya” in Orenburg. Jalil has been a member of the Komsomol since 1919. Musa continued his education at Moscow State University, where he studied in the literary department. After graduating from university, he worked as an editor for children's magazines.
Jalil's work was first published in 1919, and his first collection was published in 1925 (“We Are Coming”). 10 years later, two more collections of the poet were published: “Ordered Millions”, “Poems and Poems”. Also in his biography, Musa Jalil was the secretary of the Writers' Union.
In 1941 he went to the front, where he not only fought, but was also a war correspondent. After being captured in 1942, he was in the Spandau concentration camp. There he organized an underground organization that helped prisoners escape. In the camp, in the biography of Musa Jalil, there was still room for creativity. There he wrote a whole series of poems. For his work in an underground group he was executed in Berlin on August 25, 1944. In 1956, the writer and activist was named Hero of the Soviet Union.
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Musa Jalil - Tatar Soviet poet, Hero of the Soviet Union (1956), Lenin Prize laureate (posthumously, 1957).
Musa Jalil (Musa Mustafovich Zalilov)
(1906-1944)
The purpose of life is this: to live in such a way that even after death you do not die.
Jalil (Dzhalilov) Musa Mustafovich (real name Musa Mustafovich Zalilov) was born on February 15, 1906, the village of Mustafino, now the Orenburg region, the sixth child in the family. Father - Mustafa Zalilov, mother - Rakhima Zalilova (nee Sayfullina). The biography of Jalil Musa in early childhood was closely connected with his native village and was very similar to the life of many of his friends - ordinary village boys: he swam in the Net River, herded geese, loved to listen to Tatar songs that his mother sang to him, and fairy tales that she composed Grandmother Gilmi for her beloved grandson.
When the family moved to the city, Musa began going to the Orenburg Muslim theological school-madrassa "Khusainiya", which after the October Revolution was transformed into the Tatar Institute of Public Education - TINO.
His first poems were published in the newspaper "Kyzyl Yoldyz" ("Red Star") when he was 13 years old. Gradually, the debut and in many ways naive works of the young author become more and more mature, acquire depth, take shape, and in 1925 his first collection of poems, “We Are Walking,” was published. This period in the author’s early poetry is called “red” by many; constant ebullient and active participation in public life comes into his poetry with images of the crimson banner and the scarlet dawn of freedom (“Red Army”, “Red Power”, “Red Holiday”).
In 1927, Musa Jalil moved to Moscow, where he worked as an editor for children's magazines and entered the literary department of Moscow State University.
After graduating from Moscow State University, Jalil was appointed head of the literature and art department of the Tatar newspaper Kommunist in Moscow.
Collections of poems from the period 1929-1935 - “To a Comrade”, “Ordered Millions”, “Poems and Poems”.
In 1935, Musa Jalil was appointed head of the literary part of the Tatar studio at the Moscow State Conservatory. P.I. Tchaikovsky. The studio was supposed to train national personnel to create the first opera house in Kazan. Jalil wrote the libretto for the operas "Altynchech" ("Golden-Haired") and "Fisherman Girl". In December 1938, the opera house was opened. Musa became the first head of the literary department of the Tatar Opera House. Nowadays the Tatar State Opera and Ballet Theater is named after Musa Jalil. Jalil worked at the theater until July 1941, i.e. before he was drafted into the Red Army. In 1939, Jalil was elected Chairman of the Board of the Union of Writers of Tatarstan.
In 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army. He fought on the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts, and was a correspondent for the newspaper “Courage”.
In June 1942, during the Lyuban operation of the Soviet troops, he was seriously wounded, captured, and imprisoned in Spandau prison. In the concentration camp, Musa, who called himself Gumerov, joined the Wehrmacht unit - the Idel-Ural Legion, which the Germans intended to send to the Eastern Front. In Jedlino (Poland), where the Idel-Ural legion was training, Musa organized an underground group among the legionnaires and arranged escapes for prisoners of war. The first battalion of the Volga-Tatar Legion rebelled and joined the Belarusian partisans in February 1943. For his participation in an underground organization, Musa was executed by guillotine on August 25, 1944 in the Plötzensee military prison in Berlin.
In 1946, the USSR MGB opened a search case against Musa Jalil. 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.
Much has been written about the horrors of fascist captivity. Almost every year new books, plays, films appear on this topic... But no one will talk about it the way the prisoners of concentration camps and prisons, witnesses and victims of the bloody tragedy did. Their testimony contains something more than the harsh certainty of fact. They contain great human truth, for which they paid at the cost of their own lives.
One of such unique documents, scorching with its authenticity, is Jalil’s “Moabit Notebooks”. They contain few everyday details, almost no descriptions of prison cells, ordeals and cruel humiliations to which the prisoners were subjected. These poems have a different kind of concreteness - emotional, psychological. A series of poems written in captivity, namely the notebook that played a major role in the “discovery” of the poetic feat of Musa Jalil and his comrades, was preserved by a member of the anti-fascist resistance, the Belgian Andre Timmermans, who was sitting in the same cell with Jalil in the Moabit prison. At their last meeting, Musa said that he and a group of his Tatar comrades would soon be executed, and gave the notebook to Timmermans, asking him to transfer it to his homeland.
After the end of the war and his release from prison, Andre Timmermans took the notebook to the Soviet embassy. Later, the 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.
I will not bend my knees, executioner, before you,
Although I am your prisoner, I am a slave in your prison.
When my time comes, I will die. But know this: I will die standing,
Although you will cut off my head, villain.
Alas, not a thousand, but only a hundred in battle
I was able to destroy such executioners.
For this, when I return, I will ask for forgiveness,
I bowed my knees at my homeland.
Do you know that
In May 1945, one of the units of the Soviet troops that stormed Berlin broke into the courtyard of the fascist Moabit prison. There was no one there anymore - neither guards nor prisoners. The wind carried scraps of papers and garbage across the empty yard. One of the fighters drew attention to a piece of paper with familiar Russian letters. He picked it up, smoothed it out (it turned out to be a page torn from some German book) and read the following lines: “I, the famous Tatar writer Musa Jalil, am imprisoned in the Moabit prison as a prisoner facing political charges, and, probably, I will soon shot. If any of the Russians get this recording, let them convey greetings from me to my fellow writers in Moscow.” Then there was a list of the names of the writers to whom the poet sent his last greetings, and the address of the family.
This is how the first news about the feat of the Tatar patriotic poet came home. Soon after the end of the war, the poet's songs returned in a roundabout way, through France and Belgium - two small homemade notebooks containing about a hundred poems. These poems have become world famous today.
In February 1956, for the exceptional tenacity and courage shown in the fight against the Nazi invaders, senior political instructor Musa Jalil was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. And in 1957, for the cycle of poems “The Moabit Notebook”, he was the first among poets to be awarded the Lenin Prize.
He wrote 4 librettos for the operas “Altyn Chech” (“Golden-haired”, 1941, music by composer N. Zhiganov) and “Ildar” (1941).
In the concentration camp, Jalil continued to write poetry, in total he wrote at least 125 poems, which after the war were transferred to his homeland by his cellmate.
The Tatar State Opera and Ballet Theater, whose literary studio he headed, and one of the central streets of the city bear the name of Musa Jalil.
Musa Jalil's apartment museum is located in the poet's apartment, where he lived in 1940-1941. There is a unique exhibition here, which consists of the poet’s personal belongings, photographs and interior items.
Monument to the Tatar poet, Hero of the Soviet Union, Lenin Prize laureate Musa Jalil in Kazan
Internet resources:
Musa Jalil. Poetry/ M. Jalil // Poems of classical and modern authors. – Access mode: http://stroki.net/content/blogcategory/48/56
Musa Jalil. Moabit notebook/ M. Jalil // Young Guard. – Access mode: http://web.archive.org/web/20060406214741/http://molodguard.narod.ru/heroes20.htm
Musa Jalil. Poetry/ M. Jalil // National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan. – Access mode: http://kitaphane.tatarstan.ru/jal_3.htm
Musa Jalil. Favorites/ M. Jalil // Library of Maxim Moshkov. – Access mode: http://lib.ru/POEZIQ/DZHALIL/izbrannoe.txt_with-big-pictures.html
Aphorisms and quotes:
If life passes without a trace,
In lowliness, in captivity, what kind of honor is this?
There is beauty only in freedom of life!
Only in a brave heart there is eternity!
...Our life is just a spark of the whole life of the Motherland.
Be bold in right deeds, modest in words.
It is useless to live - it is better not to live.
Live in such a way that you don’t die even after death.
We will forever glorify that woman whose name is Mother.
It’s not scary to know that death is coming to you, If you die for your people.
Shine on our descendants like a beacon, Shine like a man, not a firefly.
Is it possible to hide old age?
You know, honey, no matter how you dance -
No oven could do it
Ice to melt frozen souls.
It doesn’t matter what you are, you’re out of sight
The essence would be bright.
Be human to the end.
Be with a high heart
Heart with the last breath of life
He will fulfill his firm oath:
I always dedicated songs to my fatherland,
Now I give my life to my fatherland.
I have often met elephant people,
I marveled at their monstrous bodies,
But I recognized him as a person
Only a man according to his deeds.