Moabit Däftäre (lost prison-written notebooks; 1944)

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Moabit Notebook2.jpg

One of the found notebooks

Status: Lost

Moabit Däftäre (English: the Moabit Notebooks) is a collective nickname for the notebooks consisting of the verses written in the Moabit prison by Musa Jalil, the Soviet Tatar poet. These notebooks were secretly written by him in the Nazi prison, months prior to his execution.

Three such notebooks were documented to had been existing, of which two were found and preserved.

Musa Cälil

Musa Cälil, 1929.

Musa Cälil (Also spelled as Mussa Jalil, Mussa Djalil, Musa Dzhalil, Mussa Dshalil, Mussa Jälil, Musa Celil, Moussa Jalíl) was a Soviet Tatar poet and resistance fighter. He is the only poet of the Soviet Union who was simultaneously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union award for his resistance fighting, and the Lenin Prize for authoring The Moabit Notebooks; both the awards were awarded to him posthumously.[1]

Prior to the WW2, he built a career of a pro-Communist poet in the Soviet Union. Cälil joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1929, which was the same year that his writing, İptäşkä (English: To the Comrade) was published.

In 1941, Cälil volunteered for the Red Army. Later on, he was captured alive by the Nazi soldiers. The Wehrmacht decided to use Musa to form a new so-called national legion. The poet, however, joined the local resistance and attempted to use the Nazi facilities to print and propagate the anti-fascist leaflets. Soon after he was caught for that and sentenced to death.

While being in prison, Mussa Jalil learned some German and made connections with the local prisoners. He then used these connections to get writing utensils and papery and use these to write and thus preserve his poetry.[2]

After the end of WW2 Jalil was claimed to be a traitor to the Soviet Union and thus all his writings were forbidden. After the death of Joseph Stalin, his impact on the WW2 resistance movement was reconsidered and even was treated like a hero - Musa Jalil was then awarded precious Soviet awards and his writings were legalized.

Notebooks

Again, three such notebooks were documented to had been existing, of which two were found and preserved. More notebooks might have been written and lost in the war.

Cälil's first notebook was preserved by the Tatars Ğabbas Şäripov and then Niğmät Teregulov, both of whom later died in Stalin's camps.

The second notebook was preserved by the Belgian cellmate André Timmermans. Those notebooks were passed to the Tatar ASSR Union of Writers in 1946 and 1947 correspondingly.

The third known notebook was lost in the archives of SMERSH, the Soviet counter-intelligence organization, and pursuits for it since 1979 have had no results.

Legacy

As it was primarily derived from the Soviet version of the happened events, according to which, in particular, Musa Jalil is depicted as a good communist and Stalinist; a talented person who died for his Communist ideas and hostility towards the Third Reich regime. There is a good chance that much of the information in this article is simply false due to the ideology bias. Additionally, given that the third known notebook was lost not just somewhere, but in the Soviet counter-intelligence agency, there is a good chance that the notebook was not lost, but rather intentionally destroyed (and thus are lost forever if not some miracle). If that is the case, the reason could be that in fact, Jalil was not a communist and/or a Stalinist, and the third notebook prevents him from "fitting the cult quite well".

So far some issues were found with the official version of what happened. Firstly, when Musa Jalil decided to print illegal leaflets and other writings, how did other (potential) domestic resistance fighters know to unite upon his leadership? He became somewhat known just some 10-15 years ago and thus might not have been widely recognized by the prisoners (how likely a person would be able to recognize someone who began publishing some 10-15 years ago?). Secondly, Wikipedia claims that "Cälil joined the Wehrmacht propaganda unit for the legion under the false name of Gumeroff", but how then the Nazis knew he is good enough to join their propaganda unit if they are not aware that he is a known poet?

Note that there could be more issues, but above has been written what had been found for the time being.

References

<references>

  1. Mussa Jalil. Selected Poems. The poetry of Truth and Passion. Rafael Mustafin, translated by Lydia Kmetyuk. Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1981
  2. Musa Jalil @ English Wikipedia Retrieved 13 Nov 2017