L’Chaim
(To Life!)
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About the Book
“This memoir shares Monika’s passion and compassion for life along with her strength and ability to survive adversities. Her story is a courageous one … never to be forgotten. It is a privilege to read it and honor to own it.” —Julie E. Knox-Brown M.Ed., Howard Community College
“In her seventy something years of a flamboyant life, Monika Smith has learned a few things about living. And about history. She is sharing them in this autobiographical and historical tour de force which takes the reader from her refined Second World War Viennese milieu, where Monika was the only child of a cruel and manipulative mother, to Providence in the United States where her mother passed herself off as a Holocaust survivor to obtain gifts and privileges, to her abusive Iraqi husband’s home town of Mosul and back to the US where she remarried—a Jesuit priest! Monika is right, let’s smile, laugh and live … and of course, read … because her second book is a feast.” —Caroline Brehat, Journalist and Author “Monika’s memoir is filled with her usual zest for living that I had seen earlier in the posthumously completed biography of her late husband and my fellow Jesuit, TGIF. Although she experienced Holocaust, horrors and hardship, her positive attitude and faith carried her through. A delightful journey!” —William J. Sneck S.J., PhD, Jesuit Center for Spiritual GrowthAbout the Author
Monika R. Smith was born in Vienna, Austria during World War II. She survived Russian occupation to complete her education in the US where she also raised four children, became an advocate for domestic violence, a force in cultural organizations and professionally engaged in a career spanning public service and the private sector. Ms. Smith now enjoys retirement with her Pomeranian, Sissi. She divides her time among homes in Uruguay, Austria, and Virginia’s Northern Neck.