All but My Life describes a range of behavior shown by the Nazis and their collaborators; their acts were shaped by fear, power, and cruelty but also momentary kindness. Several figures moved between cruelty and support, which creates a portrait of choices made under pressure rather than a lineup of clear villains. However, the narrative resists total exoneration of collaborators. Instead, Gerda utilizes her empathy to understand the actions of her tormentors and remember their more ambivalent moments without excusing their cruelty.

The depiction of Moses Merin, head of the Jewish Council, shows this tension most sharply. Known as the “king of the Jews” (90)—an epithet that refers to his wealth but also, in its allusion to Jesus Christ, hints at his ambivalent position within the Jewish community—he worked within the Nazi system and oversaw the selection in Bielitz that separated Gerda from her mother. His authority could send people to their deaths, yet he also intervened to save her. When she jumped from the truck to rejoin her mother, Merin lifted her, threw her back on, and said, “You are too young to die” (91). Gerda responded with rage in the moment but now recognizes the impossible calculations that he was forced to make inside a system that left almost no moral room; noting that Merin had a child, she speculates that his collaboration was at least partially motivated by the desire to save his daughter, implying a tug-of-war between loyalty to one’s family and loyalty to one’s broader community.

Other figures also showed unexpected sympathy. Frau Kügler, the supervisor in Bolkenhain and Landeshut, first appeared as a “grim and forbidding” woman with the “jaws of a bulldog” (114). Yet she dragged Gerda and two sick women from their beds during an SS inspection and pushed them to their looms, which kept Lindner from finding them. When they later left Landeshut, she told them goodbye through tears and whispered, “Don’t forget me” (165). A German police officer also showed this mixture when he caught Gerda studying English. He threatened her with death but then softened and told her to “run home as fast as [she] c[ould]” (50). Their gestures do not erase their participation in the system, but they reveal impulses that broke through the fascist roles they were supposed to perform. In particular, the quasi-parental concern that these figures showed for Gerda hints at the limits of dehumanizing rhetoric when it runs up against a flesh-and-blood person. Like Merin, these figures remained complicit in a murderous regime, but their individual relationships reveal an underlying moral complexity.