My father Aldo. The violin he carries with him

On October 27, 2026, my father, Aldo Liscia, passed away in Turin. He was 105 years old. It is difficult to explain what it means to lose a father when you are nearly seventy-nine yourself. I was fortunate enough to have him by my side throughout my childhood, youth, adulthood, and finally, as I grew older. I knew that one day he would be gone, but having his presence in my life for so long had made it feel like a constant, an absolute certainty. Now, I sometimes find myself thinking of something I’d like to tell him, or a question I might want to ask, only to immediately remember that it is no longer possible.
Among the conversations that come to mind, there is one that contains, I believe, a large part of his way of understanding life. Every now and then we remembered together an old Jewish joke: “Why do Jews play the violin more than the piano?” “Have you ever thought about running away with a piano?” We were both smiling, but for him that joke contained a truth experienced firsthand. When you are forced to flee you can lose your home, objects, security, even the right to live in the country where you were born. You are left with what you know, what you have learned, what you are capable of doing. A violin is taken with you; knowledge even more easily. It has no weight, it takes up no space and no one can seize it at the border.
My father’s story begins in a house that, for him, was never just any house: Villa Giulia, by the sea in Antignano, Livorno. He was born there in 1921. It had been built by his father and served as the heart of family life—the landscape of his childhood, the voices of his relatives, the proximity of the sea, and a sense of belonging to a Jewish community with deep roots. To understand Aldo, one must start there. Villa Giulia was the place where his personal history intertwined with that of several generations; it was the point of origin he always identified with, even as he went on to live in many other cities in the years that followed.
In 1938, that world was shattered. He was seventeen years old and attending a *liceo scientifico* (a high school with a focus on the sciences). He once told me that he had gone out for a bike ride with his friends; upon his return, his father informed him that he could no longer attend school because he was Jewish. I often think about the brutality of that transition: an ordinary day, a bike ride with friends, and then, news that changes your life. The racial laws did not merely take away his school desk; they made him realize that the country where he had been born suddenly viewed him as an outsider.
Villa Giulia, too, became caught up in the persecution. The property was coveted by the Ciano family—first by Costanzo, and later by his son Galeazzo, Mussolini’s son-in-law. In an atmosphere where a Jewish family could not freely defend its own rights, Aldo’s father was forced to hand it over. The cruelty of the racial laws thus manifested itself in two closely intertwined ways: the boy’s expulsion from his high school and the seizure of the home where he had been born. These were not merely two separate injustices; they were an attempt to sever both his future and his roots.
After the war, the family went through a long legal battle and succeeded in recovering Villa Giulia. For Aldo, this restitution held a significance that went far beyond the property’s monetary value. The villa served as tangible proof of a family history that persecution had sought to sever. Getting it back could not erase the exile, the fears, or the lost years, but it did mean reaffirming a right and reclaiming a place to which he could continue to belong. During the years we spent talking about it, I came to understand that Antignano was not merely the landscape of his nostalgia; it was a part of his identity—at once emotional, civic, and moral.
As a young man, he had to leave Italy. In France, he continued his studies, eventually earning his *baccalauréat*, even as the war made every choice increasingly risky. He later managed to reach Switzerland and enroll at the University of Geneva, where he studied chemical engineering with the help of a scholarship. It was there that he developed a conviction about knowledge—a belief that would go on to shape my own life as well.
In Geneva there was a very strict rule: if he were rejected twice at the same exam he would lose the right to continue his studies and the grant that allowed him to support himself. He would have risked having to return to occupied France or fascist Italy. For a young Jew it was not a simple university failure, but the concrete possibility of finding himself once again exposed to persecution and the danger of death. Each exam could decide much more than a career. When he studied, my father didn’t just think about his degree: he also studied to survive.
For those who grew up after the war, it is difficult to truly grasp such a situation. I approached my own exams with the same anxiety and ambition as many other students; he, however, faced them knowing that failure could cost him the only refuge he had managed to find. He did not develop a cult of suffering, nor did he seek to impose his own experience upon others. Instead, he gained a tenacious belief in the value of preparation, discipline, and the ability to solve problems—along with the conviction that education is not primarily a means to distinguish oneself, but a way to attain freedom and, when necessary, to find a way out.
After the war, my father built his professional and family life. He married my mother in Turin; I was born in Nice in 1948, and my brother Daniele and I spent the early years of our lives in France. The gap between his youth and mine was vast. He had experienced exclusion and flight; I was growing up in a Europe that was once again beginning to offer opportunities. I believe this is precisely why he viewed his children’s education as a fundamental responsibility: he did not want us to squander what had been denied to him.
I have a very clear memory of it. At the age of five, in Nice, I wasn’t accepted into the “pre-first-grade” class that would have allowed me to start elementary school early. The simplest solution would have been to wait. My father, however, insisted—stubbornly—that I should begin the first grade at age six. I started in February of the following year, by which time six months of classes had already gone by, and he helped me catch up on all the missed work. It wasn’t just a matter of the school curriculum; he taught me, through his actions, that an obstacle should not lead to giving up, and that hard work can reopen a door that once seemed closed. In that small episode, I now recognize a distant echo of his own life story.
From then on, he followed my progress and encouraged me throughout my school years. He was demanding—at times even stubborn—but his persistence had nothing to do with a desire for formal prestige. He cared deeply that I learn how to reason, how to truly study, and how not to settle for the first answer that came to mind. Like any child, I may not have always appreciated the pressure from a father who was so convinced of the importance of education. In time, I came to realize that his approach was, above all, an act of faith in me: he expected a great deal because he believed in what I could become.
I became a nuclear engineer thanks to him. That choice reflected my own inclinations, but it was also deeply influenced by my father. A chemical engineer, he had taken part in the development of nuclear research in Italy, working in the field of nuclear fuels and later with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. In our home, science was not an abstract subject; it was a way to ask questions, verify answers, and grapple with complex problems. Choosing nuclear engineering meant following a path of my own—yet one rooted in a field he had helped me discover and come to love.
The lesson did not end with my graduation. In my professional life, I have also worked in fields far removed from nuclear engineering. I had to shift my perspective, acquire new skills, and engage with technological transformations that no one could have foreseen during my studies. Throughout all these experiences, I drew upon my father’s lesson: never stop learning. Specific knowledge may become outdated, and professions may change; but curiosity, the capacity for understanding, and a disciplined approach to study remain invaluable assets. It is in this sense that I still feel his influence today.
He himself never ceased to take an interest in the world. He had lived through an extraordinary century—from the Livorno of the 1920s to the digital age, from the racial laws to the building of Europe, from the first applications of nuclear energy to contemporary technologies. He did not use his age as an excuse to retreat into memories. Even in his later years, he retained a remarkably vivid memory and a desire to understand what was happening around him. We could discuss events from the distant past and, the very next moment, talk about the present. This is what made our conversations so valuable: I was not merely speaking with a witness to the past, but with someone who remained curious about the future.
For him, however, bearing witness was a duty. For many years, he met with students in schools, recounting his expulsion from high school, his exile, and the persecution he faced. I believe he understood how important it was to transform the dates found in history books into the lived experience of an individual. He was seventeen when he was denied the right to an education; speaking to young people, he could explain that discrimination is not an abstract concept, but something that suddenly enters one’s daily life and destroys it. He spoke about fascism also as a warning against indifference—against the notion that rights once gained are guaranteed forever.
Alongside science and history, he nurtured a special love for his family’s heritage. He took an interest in *bagitto*—the dialect of the Jews of Livorno—and sought to preserve its words, inflections, and stories. It was a way to reconnect with the voices he had heard as a child, especially his mother’s, and to prevent a small, collective legacy from vanishing into silence. I am still struck by the contrast—though it is only an apparent one—between the engineer working in a cutting-edge technological field and the man who gathered the expressions of a familiar, ancestral language. In both instances, the same desire was at work: to understand, to preserve, and to pass on.
In this relationship with memory, Villa Giulia held a unique place. It was not merely the villa that the Cianos had tried to seize from the family, nor was it just a beautiful house overlooking the sea. It was the place where Aldo had been born and where he had spent the happy years of his youth, before history violently intruded. It was the house built by his father—a tangible testament to the labor and hopes of the preceding generation. It was also the place to which the family had asserted their right to return. It is no coincidence that he dedicated a book to it, *Villa Giulia and Its Children*—a title that speaks to how, for him, the house was inseparable from the people and the generations who had lived there. Its history encompasses the serenity of childhood, the arbitrary cruelty of persecution, and the tenacity of a return. For this reason, I do not believe one can tell the story of my father without also telling the story of Antignano.
And yet, it would be just as wrong to define him solely as a man from Livorno. He spent sixty-five years in Turin—more than half of his very long life. It was here that he built his daily routine, as well as the relationships and personal bonds of his mature years; here he spent his old age, and here his life came to an end. Livorno remained the city of his roots, with Villa Giulia serving as its symbolic anchor; Turin was the city he inhabited day after day—a span of time that, in itself, exceeds the length of an entire adult life. My father managed to hold these two identities together, without one ever erasing the other. Ultimately, having been forced to leave, he had learned the art of feeling at home in more than one place.
His story was European long before there was such frequent talk of a European identity. Born in Livorno, forced into exile in France, educated in Switzerland, and deeply engaged in research and international cooperation, he later lived for decades in Turin. Yet, he never ceased to be the boy from Antignano. Reflecting on him, I realize that a sense of roots need not contradict an openness to the world. One’s origins grow stronger when they do not become a prison; familiarity with other languages, cities, and cultures can enrich them without erasing them.
In his later years—as he passed ninety and then one hundred—the chance to still speak with him became an increasingly clear privilege. For his hundredth birthday in January 2021, family and friends gathered, even if only via a screen: people from different generations and countries, all connected to a man who had lived through nearly the entire history of the twentieth century and a quarter of the one that followed. Each new birthday was a celebration, yet one can grow accustomed even to the exceptional. I believe I, too, grew accustomed to the good fortune of still having him by my side.
I now find myself in a new and somewhat unsettling position: I am the eldest in the family. At nearly seventy-nine, I had still been a son in the most concrete sense—I had someone who knew my history from before I could remember it, someone to whom I could turn for advice, share news with, or pose a question. I miss this dialogue more than I had imagined. It is not just the man with the extraordinary life story that I miss; I miss my father—his intelligence, his tenacity, his persistence, and his affection.
When I think about what he left behind, three images, above all, come to mind. The first is Villa Giulia—the seaside home where he was born, and which persecution tore away from his family—representing the value of roots and dignity. The second is a room at the University of Geneva, where a young man studied, knowing that passing his exams might mean staying safe—representing the value of knowledge. The third is far more modest: a house in Nice where a father helped his son catch up on six months of schooling—representing the desire to turn one’s own experience into an opportunity for those who would follow. These are three moments in a single story—a story that reaches all the way to me.
And I return, finally, to that joke about the violin. My father had to learn that one can be deprived of many things, but not of what one has achieved through study. He taught me, who didn’t have to escape, not to face the world empty-handed: to bring with me knowledge, curiosity and the ability to learn. His violin became mine too. It is not an object that I inherited, but a way of life that I hope to be able to pass on to those who come after me.
I miss my father. And along with the pain I feel immense gratitude for the time we shared. The best way to remember him, I believe, is not to simply talk about how extraordinary his life was, but to continue to live according to what he taught me: study, question oneself, not resign oneself to injustices, never take freedom for granted. And always have your violin with you.

Roberto Liscia