This work presents, for the first time, a literary comparison between the writings of Primo Levi and Imre Kertész on Auschwitz. The study explores what literary and fictional Holocaust texts can achieve in contrast to historical representations. While Levi was guided by the stylistic ideal of "chiarezza," the model of scientific knowledge, and the idea of humanity, Kertész rejects the ideal of humanity as a critical regulative for his portrayal. The author discusses the influence of Adorno's aesthetic considerations on the autonomous artwork, Bakhtin's theoretical reflections on the rogue figure, and Camus' philosophy of existence on Kertész's conception of the novel, as well as how the specificity of the Auschwitz experience, the annihilation of the individual, is represented from a distanced perspective.