January 9, 2025
As Stanley Tucci reflects, "Given the circumstances in today’s world, the parallels between then and now are impossible to ignore. It’s an incredible story, but it’s also happening today, to millions of people . . . It's a story about people in a certain place and time, and what happened to them, and what happened to them has happened before, and has happened since, and will continue to happen. Unless we as the human race begin to understand that we are all the same.”
What would you do if fascism and antisemitism seized your homeland? In his award-winning podcast, Pack One Bag, documentarian David Modigliani takes listeners on a gripping journey through his family’s escape from Italy in 1938.
The podcast series features actor Stanley Tucci as Modigliani’s great-grandfather, who was known as Italy’s “King of the Books,” and once advised Mussolini but later turned against him.
As Modigliani retraces his family’s steps across Italy, he uncovers hidden Fascist spy documents, personal family diaries, and the poignant Jewish love story of his grandparents that echoes through time.
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Transcript of Conversation with David Mogdiliani and Stanley Tucci:
Manya Brachear Pashman:
As a documentary filmmaker, David Modigliani has created a variety of works on politics in America, improv comedy, and the improv comedy of politics in America. But during the pandemic, he discovered the love letters of his grandparents, written moments before they fled fascist Italy. Those letters led him to produce a more personal project – an award-winning podcast series starring Stanley Tucci, titled Pack One Bag. David is with us now to talk about that journey.
David, welcome to People of the Pod.
David Mogdiliani:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad to be here.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
So, at the core of your podcast, Pack One Bag, is the story of your grandfather, a Nobel Prize winner who fled Italy in 1938 and this was a story that you heard as a young man, as a teenager, right? But if you could share with our listeners what that story was, when you originally heard it.
David Mogdiliani:
Yeah, so my grandfather, I was just a five year old kid when he won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1985. But as I became a teenager and started to grow up, I became sort of fascinated by their love story, the story of escape.
Which was basically that my grandfather, Franco Modigliani, had been a 19 year old kid in Rome when Mussolini passed the racial laws against Jews like him, and he didn't know quite what to do, and he was so fortunate that he had fallen in love with this girl from Bologna named Serena Calabi, whose family had really been planning for this moment for many years, had had the foresight and the privilege to move resources outside of the country, put together an exit strategy, and when they fled Italy for Paris in the fall of 1938 they invited him to join them. They invited their daughter's boyfriend to join them.
And the family was in Paris for about nine months and then made it onto the Normandie, a French ocean liner that left the coast of France in August of 1939 and turned out to be the last boat out of mainland Europe before Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began. So that kind of fairy tale escape, a whirlwind romance, that getting married, you know, in Paris on the run, and arriving in the US, kind of just in the nick of time, was the kind of origin story that I grew up with as a kid.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
And how did your grandmother's family know how to read those tea leaves?
David Mogdiliani:
My grandmother's father had been known as ile de libri, the king of the books in Italian because he had founded and run along with his wife, something called La messaggerie italiane, which was the biggest book distribution business in all of Italy. It gave him resources and an understanding of where things might be going in Europe in the 1930s so I had known all of that. But when I sort of became more interested in this project and wanted to learn more, and dug into some boxes that my dad had, 19 boxes of my family's documents, we found inside them, a couple of letters from Benito Mussolini to my great grandfather, the king of the books, and that kind of was a staggering moment to see the signature of the future dictator of Italy there at the bottom of the page.
Mussolini had been a lefty socialist newspaper editor in 1914, 1915, and when he had been kicked out of the Socialist Party for supporting Italy's intervention and involvement in World War I, the Socialist Party had kicked him out, and he had decided to start his own newspaper. He needed help doing that, and it turns out that my great grandfather had not only advised him on sort of launching his startup newspaper, but had also funneled a secret subsidy from the French government to Mussolini to fund this paper. So I was relieved to learn that he later had broken with Mussolini, you know, didn't follow sort of the whole fascist experiment, but that he had a sense of Mussolini's temperament, his character. And really, after Mussolini killed a political opponent of his in 1924, a couple of years after coming into power, that is when my great grandfather said, if things continue this way, there's no future for us in this country.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
And when you say your great grandfather, the king of the books, concluded that there was no future for us, did he mean your family, or did he mean the Jewish community?
David Mogdiliani:
I think at that time, in 1924, he meant our family, and I suppose also those who were not interested in kind of following a blindly fascist authoritarian dictator to the extent that he might transform the country. One of the things that I was sort of fascinated to learn in this project was that Italy was, in fact, a very inclusive place for Jews.
In 1870, the country was sort of unified, and the Jews who had been in ghettos across Italy for hundreds of years, were released, became really central part of Italian society, which was a very tolerant society. Mussolini, in fact, had a couple of Jews in his cabinet. As late as 1935 had a Jewish lover. And it was not really until a later stage of Mussolini's fascism that he very swiftly turned against the Jews, eventually passing the Leggi Razziali, the racial laws, which really instituted a whole set of restrictions that only got worse.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
So talk a little bit about your process. I mean, how did you piece together this saga and all of the many pieces of this story that you had not known before, this saga that eventually became 10 episodes of your podcast.
David Mogdiliani:
Yeah, you know, during COVID, a lot of people baked banana bread. I pulled out my grandparents' love letters. I had always wanted to interview them to document– I had been a documentary filmmaker for many years and to capture their story–and I kind of just never got around to it. Before I did it, they died. They passed away. And so I had kind of been living with a sense of guilt about that.
But I was in a new romance with a woman named Willa. We had become quarantine mates during the pandemic, she was really curious about the seeds of this family story that I'd shared with her. And we pulled out these love letters, which, in fact, my grandmother had translated into English for her grandchildren, because she really wanted them to know how you know, love had gotten them through the horror of that period. And pulling out those love letters, I was sort of stunned by how fresh and relevant they seemed. Not these kind of black and white mementos from a time gone by, but in a world where there was increasing authoritarian leadership around the world where antisemitism was on the rise, again, their letters to one another, which were going back and forth between Rome and Bologna.
They were dealing with these questions, how do we deal with rising fascism? How bad is the antisemitism getting, and what do we do about it? And inside of those boxes, we found not only letters from Mussolini, but kind of the other part of the story. You asked me about the story I grew up with the fairy tale escape that was kind of the baseline that I was operating from. What I had not fully understood was that when my grandfather fled Italy with his girlfriend, and the king of the books, and was so fortunate to escape with them, he left behind his whole family, including his mother and his older brother, Giorgio.
And eventually, as World War II kicked off, as they got into the Nazi occupation of Rome, all he could do was read about, you know, the Nazis invading his hometown, what was going on abroad, and he had lost touch entirely with his brother, and yet, what We found inside of these 19 boxes was a 25 page letter from my grandfather's brother, Giorgio, from the older brother that he'd left behind.
And that 25 page letter, it had come just after the war ended. And it said, essentially, you know, we survived. And there's so much to tell you, you know, here's how. And it was just this page turning epic of how my grandfather's brother had shepherded his young family through the war, how they had hid in a small hill town outside of Rome, how he had taken on fake identity, and his little children had learned their fake names and identities and how to cross themselves and go to church and pose as though they were Catholic, and ultimately, how they had made it all the way through to the liberation of Rome. And that, to me, felt like this whole other world, the kind of parallel universe that my grandparents had escaped, the experiences that they might have had if they'd not been so fortunate to be among. Those who were able to flee, and that, along with the question of, why do we have these letters from Mussolini, you know, in the basement, and what's going on with the king of the books, all of that made me want to go back to Italy to dig into my family's past, to better understand this story, to find, you know, answers that could inform my present moment.
At the time, you know, I thought, well, I'll need someone to help me, an audio engineer, at least if we're going to do a podcast. And Willa said, Well, you know, or I could do it. She had learned some audio skills in film school, and I had this question of, like, is this a good idea? Like mixing my budding romance with, you know, digging into my family's, you know, unknown history, but her curiosity had kind of inspired me to dig into this story in the first place, and so we set off together back to Italy with kind of no idea of just how far that adventure would take us.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
So I should explain that that saga, you tell that saga in the 10 episodes of the podcast, and the voice of your grandfather is actually that of actor Stanley Tucci. How did you connect with Stanley about this project, and what was it about the project that appealed to him?
David Mogdiliani:
I knew that we wanted to bring not only the personal investigative nature of kind of solving some of these mysteries, putting together the pieces, but also to bring to life the experiences and the stories of the characters in this podcast. And so I knew that I could bring to life the voices of my grandparents, which I remembered so well, but I really wanted to bring to life as well the king of the books, my great grandfather, and whenever I thought about him as this kind of debonair Italian, you know, media magnate who got his family out of dodge just in time, he seemed like this kind of cultured, congenial hero that someone like Stanley Tucci might play.
And I'd been in touch with Stanley Tucci a few years prior in regards to his searching for Italy series, we almost worked together on that the scheduling didn't work out, but we'd formed a relationship, and so I shared with him, Hey, I'm digging into the story. I'm finding all this incredible stuff. I want to tell it in audio. And he said, I'd love to help. How can I be part of this? In addition to those more standard documentary techniques. We also do a little bit of kind of creative storytelling, and it's wonderful to have Stanley Tucci do that.
We travel to London, where he lives, and did two long recording sessions with him, and he, having Italian parents and grandparents of his own, speaking Italian well, was able to snap right into that character. He needed very little direction, and it was a great joy to hear him kind of bring that character to life.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
And in fact, you had a conversation with him about his own family history and the importance of connecting to that. And I want our listeners to hear a clip of that conversation.
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David Mogdiliani:
Okay, so tell me, I guess what drew you to the story. Why spend some time doing this?
Stanley Tucci:
Well, a number of things. I'm interested in Italian history, Italian stories, Italian people. I'm interested in World War II, and given the circumstances in today's world, you can't help but be interested in the parallels of that time and our time. It's your family story. It's an incredible story, but it's something that's happening today. It's happening as we speak. It's happening all over the world to literally millions of people.
David Mogdiliani:
I know you get asked this a lot, but what was your first connection to learning about Italy and its history and what happened to there?
Stanley Tucci:
My mother's father fought in World War I. He was a corpsman, and he was up in the Alps, and I mean, like the worst fighting, but he never spoke of that. But we were always told about our family history. We were able to live in Italy when I was a kid, and we were able to go visit my family. This is in the early 1970s down in Colombia, and that was fascinating, because it wasn't even 30 years after the war.
But that history was really important to us, and the way that those stories were really funny that they would tell, or really frightening that they would tell. And like basically every Italian family, those stories were always told at, you know, dinner parties, at gatherings, at holidays, and you always had a connection with your family. You were always doing things with your family.
Sometimes you were like, Why are we here? No one seems to be getting along, you know. But that said, it's invaluable. Understanding that history, knowing those people. And I really love this story because it's a universal story. It is an Italian story, but it's not an Italian story. It's a Jewish story, but it's not a Jewish story.
It's a story about people in a certain place and time, and what happened to them. And what happened to them has happened before and has happened since and will continue to happen. Unless we as the human race begins to understand that we are all the same. That's why I like this story. It's about hope for equality.
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Manya Brachear Pashman:
David, you use the word refugee. I'm just curious if your grandparents considered themselves refugees, given the timing of their departure and then the timing of what their relatives that they left behind experienced.
David Mogdiliani:
Yeah, and I know actually they specifically did. There's a letter, when my grandmother fled with her parents in early September of 1938. Her father had told her, we're going to leave in the morning. We're going to make this look just like we're going on vacation so we don't draw any undue attention. And I want you to pack one bag and we'll take off in the morning. And they went ahead to Paris, and they were joined there a few weeks later by my grandfather, who had to settle some of his affairs in Rome and get his act together.
And so there are letters from my grandmother, having just arrived in Paris, writing to her boyfriend back in Rome and hoping that he's going to come soon. And she says, quite specifically, we're in this tiny hotel room, and we're really refugees now, everything feels quite different. She, of course, had come from this privileged background. She grew up in this beautiful villa on the hill above Bologna that her father had built, a villa that they had to abandon very quickly. And so she was sort of encountering the reality of being outside of her comfort zone, of not having sort of the comforts that she had grown up with and wishing and hoping that her beloved would join her soon, which would kind of allay some of her anxiety as a refugee.
I think they also felt that sense of being unsettled through their nine months in Paris, from the fall of 1938 until the summer of 1939 being unsure of whether war might break out during that period, my great grandfather, my grandmother's father, the king of the books, he found that his bank accounts inside of Italy had been blocked by the fascist regime, something that we uncovered in more detail in the archives in Rome as we dug into these fascist documents that were kept about all of this persecution, and they had this sense of being unsure of quite when they would leave and how far kind of the tentacles of the fascist regime might extend. And so I do think that they felt like refugees, even if they themselves did not encounter one tenth of the horrors that the family members who remained behind did.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
We have a narrative podcast series called The Forgotten Exodus that really speaks to that. It's about Jews fleeing the Middle East and leaving their homes behind. I mean, that's what you're doing, is you're leaving your home behind, even if you were hated in your home, even if you faced violent antisemitism, it was still home. I'm curious how much your family was fleeing fascism, or were they fleeing antisemitism? Were they fleeing more of one than the other, or did they go hand in hand?
David Mogdiliani:
Yeah, well, I think that their initial plans that my great grandfather, the king of the books, was making, were related more to fascism, to his understanding of Mussolini and to political violence and how far things might go. But in the summer of 1938 as he began to get information about the coming racial laws against Jews, and in early September of 1938 when the racial laws were passed such that Jewish children could no longer go to public schools. Teachers couldn't teach at public schools or universities if they were Jewish. Jews could not own a business with more than 99 employees. They couldn't have domestic help of non Jews.
And that initial, you know, set of restrictions against them only increased that fall in the following months, you know, obviously getting to the point eventually that Jews could own nothing, that even the debts that they owed to other people should be diverted to the state. But the beginning of those racial laws is quite literally what they were fleeing when they then decided to execute their exit strategy. It was the promulgation of the racial laws that caused them to leave.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
In other words, they began to develop that exit strategy because of fascism. It was initially kind of envisioned as a flight from fascism, but when the culture became antisemitic. That was the trigger.
David Mogdiliani:
Exactly.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
What have I not asked you, David, that you think is a really important point to mention.
David Mogdiliani:
I would say, just about the love and humor that's such a big part of this story. My grandparents were, you know, constantly bickering at one another in this very loving way that we capture in the podcast, just the jump start of their romance was amazing to me. I mean, my grandmother came into Rome with her father, the businessman. She encountered this young kid who she later called il tipo ridiculo, meaning the ridiculous character, because he was just sort of a pesky all over the place, you know guy. And when she came back a second time, he had this plan to take her out, and he had concocted this outing up the Via Appia Antica, which is the ancient road outside of Rome.
They got to know each other a little better, and she let him just steal a little kiss at the end of that little date. And the next morning, when she was going back to Bologna, he showed up at the train station in this suit, you know, two sizes too big for him. He's pacing the platform, and he had come to declare his undying love for her.
He was so worried that she was going to get a marriage proposal from a fancy guy in Bologna, and he felt like he had to state his case. And she was like, you know, you got to calm down. You know, it was just a kiss. You know, this is really over the top. And she told him, I want you to not write to me for three months. She really wanted this kind of cooling off period. She said, then write to me if you want. And let's see, you know, if we really have a connection. And so three months later, she's in Bologna, and she gets this package from Rome, and on the top it says:
Oh aspettato tre meze, signora di tatoreza. (I waited three months, Madam Dictator.)
Ma ogna notte teo scritto. (But every night I wrote to you.)
And she opens it up, and there's 91 little letters inside. So every night he had written to her, and then he had saved them and sent them all at the end. So these kind of dramatic, you know, acts of romance and love, the way that they got married inside of the fascist Italian consulate in Paris, that was a huge part of their story, and I think a huge part of what got them through that very anxious, you know, experience.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
You talk about how this moment in history jumpstarted your grandparents' romance. Do you mind sharing with listeners what happened to that girlfriend who tagged along and helped you with this project?
David Mogdiliani:
It's probably about 3% you know, of the overall story. We're really focused on the story of my grandparents, my great grandparents. But yes, this girlfriend Willa that I had, that had sparked curiosity about my grandparents story when we pulled out the love letters four years ago, as she then came with me as we went back to Italy, digging into the archives, interviewing our cousins, bringing this story to life, and of course, brought us a lot closer together.
Our own relationship continued on, and we were married last year. And just about three and a half months ago, we welcomed our first child, Marcello Vita Modigliani, Vita meaning life in Italian which was a family name. So yes, my own romance has been part of this story as well.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
David, thank you so much. I really appreciate you doing this project and then coming and speaking with us about that. It really is quite relevant and quite instructive. And so thank you so much.
David Mogdiliani:
Thank you. It's been a pleasure to be here, and folks can find pack one bag anywhere they listen to podcasts, Apple, Spotify, but really anywhere, including at packonebagshow.com. You can stream it straight from the website there at packonebagshow.com and thanks so much for this wonderful conversation. I really enjoyed it.
Manya Brachear Pashman:
If you missed the last episode, be sure to tune in for the conversation between AJC CEO Ted Deutch and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. In that conversation on the ground in Philadelphia, Governor Shapiro and Ted talked about the antisemitism the governor has faced, the importance of nuance and how simply there is none when it comes to expressions of anti-Jewish hatred.
