ABSTRACT

Nowadays, as everyone knows, the simple fact of comparing and thereby linking Nazism and Communism encounters stiff resistance. There are several reasons why this is so. The first has nothing to do with political analysis; rather, it emerges from the displeasure people naturally feel when reduced to one of many examples marshaled in the service of historical generalization. This displeasure becomes a wound when painful experiences are involved, and those related to totalitarian regimes are always painful. From such a perspective, clearly, what at first seems an inappropriate comparison soon becomes offensive to the individual. One would not go as far as to tell someone who just lost a child that her pain was identical to that of many other unhappy parents. It is important to emphasize this from the outset, so as not to lose sight of – and neglect – the subjective point of view. For each of us, experience, in whatever forms it comes, is of necessity singular. Moreover, singular experiences are the most intense. When reason dispossesses an individual of his past and of the meaning attached to it, in the name of the need to compare and generalize, its arrogance seems insufferable. What is more, it is easy to understand how anyone involved in a mystical experience will refuse as a matter of principle any and all comparisons, and even the very use of words to describe it. For such an experience is and must remain ineffable and beyond representation, incomprehensible and unknowable, because it is sacred.