The Eichmann Trial

Sir:

Israel has a nice problem on its hands with its much, much publicized Adolf Eichmann affair.

Not to put him to death would arouse the anger of the thousands who survived the concentration camps and the thousands of relatives of those who did not.

To kill him would be like televising somebody being tortured to death, and all kinds of humane societies would cry for mercy.

PINCHOS HOFFMAN Wickliffe, Ohio

Sir:

Let us now sensibly focus the ideological issue. Let us not lose sight of its challenge to Western morality, an integral part of the Christian concept.

The Eichmann case is not a personal revenge. Eichmann is the symbol of an era, a dread precedent. This is being put on trial in Israel for world consideration. It is imperative that all free peoples join in condemning genocide and stamp it out for all times.

R. HEFTEL Los Angeles

Angst

Sir:

Congratulations on your article, "The Anatomy of Angst." As a Protestant minister, I found it particularly descriptive of the issues and dynamics within my own parish and among the people of this suburb.

Perhaps I reveal my own anxiety in reflecting my pleasure at finding an appraisal of the American scene that agrees with my own observations. It is good to find confirmation of my own prejudices and feelings in a quarter as significant as that of TIME. (THE REV.) C. EUGENE SILL Hillcrest Congregational Church Pleasant Hill, Calif.

Sir:

Why look beyond the pages of TIME in your search for the causes of Weltschmerz ?

Laos, Cuba, Africa continue to boil. Mobs riot in Seoul, Black Muslims rally in Chicago, TV is bad, even baseball declines. Everywhere the have-nots are vocal about their anxiety to have, and the haves are doubly anxious to hang on to what they have. Is it any wonder that the comfortable U.S. is afflicted by fear of the unknown future?

MITCHELL J. MULHOLLAND Becket, Mass.

Sir:

I rarely look at TIME and even more rarely read it. You would probably call me an "intellectual." However, as a research psychologist who is attempting to understand guilt, anxiety, defense, and other such topics, I read your cover story. I cannot express the intensity of my feelings of concern, disgust, anger and frustration. Indeed, I must add anxiety about TIME, its editors, its writers and its regular readers.

LEONARD M. LANSKY, PH.D. Lexington, Mass.

Sir:

I'll bet this article is more therapeutic than five years on the couch!

HARRY FREED

Forest Hills, N.Y.

Sir:

We Buddhists believe that the cause not only of anxiety but of all other troubles is a deep-rooted illusion known as "self." For the belief in the existence of self makes the mind believe that it exists as an amorphous continuum, which appears to be the "I." Since the "I" exists in a continuum, it is an inescapable receiver of all pains and pleasures of the past, the present and the future. Hence we tend to think: " I" was happy a moment ago, now "I" am unhappy and what will "I" be next moment?"

Buddhism breaks down the illusion of the "I" and shows that it does not exist. What exists is disjointed sets of mind, matter (or body) and their interactions produced anew at every moment by nonself causes. There is no "I" that existed in the past existing now or in the future to go through the torment of these nonself causes.

TIN SWE Thaketa Myo, Burma

Sir:

When I saw TIME'S "Guilt & Anxiety" cover, I did a double take. Over the years, I'd been working (on and off) on a series of paintings based on the human emotions (nature of man, if you please). Naturally, Munch's painting of The Cry on a magazine cover struck me as a bit breathtaking.

The article, too, is excellent, and an unusual venture for a news magazine. It explains, without saying so, the present generation's obsession with security.

Here is an oil study of Security (From the Cradle to the Grave).

JACOB BURCK Editorial Cartoonist Chicago Sun-Times Chicago

Sir:

How terribly inappropriate, your cover for Good Friday and Easter week!

ALBA LEONE Belmont, Mass.

Sir:

The cover story was indeed TIMELY, since Good Friday and Easter are the Christian's acknowledgment that Christ died and rose to effect a release of man from guilt of sin and therefore from his anxieties.

D. L. MARSHALL Kansas City, Kans.

Dzhaz in the U.S.S.R.

Sir:

Your item concerning jazz in the U.S.S.R. sounds so fantastic that I have decided to write to you about it because mention is made of me.

I honestly was greatly impressed by Trombone Player Frank Witters and his orchestra when they came to Moscow in 1926 (Sidney Bechet, the musician you mentioned, joined the group later). I did make up my mind to form a jazz orchestra of my own, but I didn't quit the Moscow Conservatory as your item asserts. I finished it in 1930 as a pianist in Professor Blumenfeld's class. The works of Gershwin, Kern, Rodgers and Porter are widely popular in our country. They are frequently performed in concert halls and over the radio. We are also well familiar with U.S. jazz orchestras, ranging from Duke Ellington to Gerry Mulligan. Incidentally, I played Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with a symphony orchestra a few days ago in Stalino while touring the Donets coal region.

Our factories cannot keep up with the rapidly increasing demand for variety and jazz music recordings. This gave birth to a black market, where, by the way, duplicates of Soviet jazz recordings and popular songs were sold as well as of U.S. music. Being a member of the editorial board at the Central Sound-Recording Studios, I know for sure that our factories are now expanding production. Things look black for the black market.

Last, I was surprised that you lost your sense of humor, so typical of you Americans. Leonid Utesov was joking when he spoke in his article about the priority of Odessa in creating Dixieland. What he really meant was that musical improvisation has existed since time immemorial, and notably in Odessa, where he spent his youth and heard musicians improvising popular folk tunes.

ALEXANDER TSFASMAN Honored Artist of the RSFSR Moscow

View Through the Tube

Sir:

Your article on the sad state of television was excellent. I have thought for several years that the industry would go through a shakedown period and would level off with some measure of quality. The situation has become progressively worse, and from the looks of next year's programs, it will not improve. Apparently the networks have forgotten that the airwaves belong to the American people and not the sponsors.

WILLIAM A. MCDONALD Durham, N.C.

Sir:

In personal defiance of this passing season, I have returned to reading.

MRS. GLORIA WELLER Brookline, Mass.

Sir:

Whoever writes the reviews on television doesn't know what he is talking about. I watch television to be entertained and to relax my mind from the everyday grind, and as such I do not like, and will not watch, any program that tries to delve into racial or religious or any other turmoil of the day. And it just makes me boil when some joker implies that people are jerks because they don't demand symphonies or opera or some other kind of high-toned programs.

CLARENCE N. COOPER

Port Huron, Mich.

Raisin on the Screen

Sir:

As co-producer of the motion picture A Raisin in the Sun, and, therefore, a very interested party in its critical reception, I would like to point out a stunning example of TIME'S tortured critical dichotomy.

What beats me is that the same script, written by the same author, played by the same cast, can evoke such antitheatrical opinions between the Cinema and Theater reviewers of your magazine. This seems less an illustration of journalistic democracy than critical anarchy.

Where Cinema calls Raisin "a writhing vital mess of tenement racism," Theater called it [ when it appeared on Broadway in 1959] "a well-crafted play."

If "conflict, a valid moral struggle, character development and people one can care about and respect" (Theater) is "superior soap opera in blackface" (Cinema) then we, who have been in radio and television these many years, have been doing Procter & Gamble a disservice.

DAVID SUSSKIND New York City

Sir:

Whoops--am afraid that TIME'S ever-diminishing pretenses to sophistication took yet another dip by way of its reviewer's baffling determination to employ ante-bellum terminology in his incoherent notation on the movie [Raisin in the Sun]. I don't have any idea what "Mammy" and "blackface" adjectives have to do with reviewing a motion picture, but save your copy; it is believed, in some quarters of the world, that the Herrenvolk may rise again !

LORRAINE HANSBERRY New York City

Dealer's Deals

Sir:

As an active participant in the motor game for the last 35 years, I was entertained by your article [on Auto Dealer Jim Moran]. It showed that the problems of the automotive trade are the same the world over.

Is not the much maligned motor salesman harmless in comparison with those members of the public who try to cheat the dealer?

How often have I seen a normally honest man turn into an utter fraud when trying to do a motor deal. His old car "has never left a tarred road" (just see the thick red dust under the seats!); "the meter reading of 10,000 miles is genuine" (just look at the different makes of the five tires!); his engine "is original, was never opened" (oversize pistons prove--too late--the opposite); "never had an accident" (but the chassis is welded and the body full of lead). Worse still, his car "is fully paid for; nobody has a lien on it" (but many installments are unpaid).

No, I think it should be said that the motor dealer, if he is not on guard, is more often the victim than the culprit.

ROBERT HAINEBACH Africars Cape Town, South Africa

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