	The other major theme in Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz is that of survival, in this world of inevitable death and loss of humanity, one must struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally. Primo Levi expresses how both he and different people survive in the Hell that was Auschwitz, between people that did noting for themselves and accepted death to those, like himself who fought tooth and nail for life. The first group of people who existed in the camps were the musselmen, “the weak, the inept, those doomed to selection.” People who had clearly given up on fighting for life, like the musselmen, like Null Achtzen, “give the impression of being empty inside” They have stopped surviving they are barely living. Then there were people like Schepschel, Alfred L., Elias and Henri. These four showed that one could find a way to survive, find a place within Hell and do their best to continue to exist. One of the aspects of this is that they are named,  showing individuality, life. The try to maintain humanity in times of inhumanity.  Schepschel, firstly, does little, but enough. Stealing, dancing, being just conniving enough to live, but live he does. Then Alfred L. he lived in the camps as such a way of being as disciplined and proper as possible, gaining him respect from the Kapo and was able to survive that way. Levi expects that he is “living his cold life of the determined and joyless dominator.” even after the war. Elias on the other hand seemed to survive because he was so far outside the norm, that others would set, physically indestructible, mentally indecipherable. A beast of a man who could out do any man in the camps in nearly anything. Elias, “is a survivor: he is the most adaptable, the human type most suited to this way of living” but it is odd because he exists outside of what it seems to be to be human, someone who survives but seems to never have been a “man” in the first place. Then there is Henri at the other end of survival, conniving, scheming, and to some degree heartless. A man who went out of his way to maintain his “humanness” while surviving but became something else in the process. All of these different methods of surviving the camps have merit and loss to Levi it seems, but he puts an emphasis that they are survivors. The aspect that not all survivors are equal though seems apparent as judgments are passed in a sense upon those who both lived through the experience and those who seemingly chose not to.
	It is of interest that Levi's work is something that is written directly after the events and that Art's story of his father is years later. Both stories deal with the same concepts at their core but the time that they are written seems to draw them apart. Survival in Auschwitz  is written at a time when the focus was on the immediate effects of the concentration camps, why did we survive, what really happened, how has this effected humanity, inducing our own. While Maus was written decades after the war when people were analyzing the effects of the war on the families of survivors and the collective guilt that seemed to come across many survivors. The considerations for time separating the themes of the books seems to be the biggest difference in content from he two of them. Yes Maus spends very little time in the camps. Yes Survival in Auschwitz lets us know little about Primo Levi's life prior to the camps, but the both illustrate the effects of the Holocaust on survivors beautifully.
