The Assault

At the moment of the assault, Anton holds a dice in his hand, which he is about to throw in the process of playing a board game with his family. The dice then moves through the story as a motif. In the midst of the commotion following the assault, Anton puts the dice in his pocket. The almost instinctual act of preserving the dice is filled with poignancy, as he will never again return to the board game: his life is in the process of being irrevocably ripped from him. The dice demonstrates the abruptness of the assault and the totality of its rapid destruction: one moment Anton is peacefully playing a board game with his family, and the next they are being executed. He also rediscovers the dice in his pocket as he leaves Nazi custody in the company of his uncle—and the dice also symbolizes the utter and complete loss of Anton’s former life. This is perhaps why Anton fixates on a lighter with a dice pattern during a panic attack that he later suffers as a man in his 30s. In that scene, the dice and all that it symbolizes has become subliminally buried within his psyche and can only serve as a dim flashpoint for his anxiety attack.