In his apartment overlooking
Manhattan's Central Park, Abraham Feller sat nervously one morning last
week, chatting with his wife. For two weeks he had been acting
strangely, had even mentioned suicide. Mrs. Feller left him only
momentarily to call the family doctor, then returned to the living
room.”I tried to cheer him up,” she said later. “He was an idealist, and his
whole life was devoted to the United Nations. He thought he wasn't
doing his job well. He was a perfectionist.”Book on a Table. But before the doctor came, Abe Feller jumped to his
feet. “It's no use,” he cried. “The doctors can't help me!” He ran to
the rear of the apartment. Mrs. Feller clung to him—first to his head,
then to one arm, finally to one leg. While she struggled, Feller threw
open a window. She screamed and cried, “Don't jump!” He broke away, and
within seconds his body lay twelve stories below in an open cellarway.Upstairs on a table in the Feller apartment lay a copy of a book Feller
had written about the U.N. and dedicated to his 17-year-old daughter:
“To Caroline and her generation.” His own generation had been too much
for Abe Feller.Feller, a 47-year-old native New Yorker, was one of U.N.'s pioneers and
one of its highest and most valuable officers. A lawyer who spent 15
years in teaching and in New Deal Government service, he joined the
U.N. staff when it was being formed in London in 1946 as legal counsel
and policy adviser to Secretary General Trygve Lie. A few weeks before
his suicide, he had been made acting Assistant Secretary General.Trials & Tribulations. Abe Feller, a tough-minded man who had long shown
an abundance of intellectual and physical resiliency, had been working
himself mercilessly, and he had grown progressively depressed in recent
weeks over the trials & tribulations afflicting the U.N. He was worried
about the U.N.'s inability to end the Korean war . He was upset over Lie's resignation
last week. But what depressed Feller most were the problems and
pressures that had been laid on the U.N. in recent months by a Federal
grand jury and the McCarran Senate subcommittee, in their investigation
of subversive Americans on the U.N. Secretariat. Feller, under no
suspicion himself, was the U.N.'s legal adviser on the subject. The
hearings uncovered 17 among the 2,000 Americans on the U.N. staff who
refused to say whether or not they have engaged in subversive
activities.Lie angrily charged that Abe Feller's suicide had been brought on by the
extra strain of defending Americans at U.N. against “indiscriminate
smears and exaggerated charges.” Senators McCarran, Willis Smith of
North Carolina and James Eastland of Mississippi just as angrily called
Lie's accusation “irresponsible,” and promised to continue the inquiry.
