"This is Free Europe. This is Free Romania". The voice that would utter these words in the beginning of the famous Free Europe radio shows for decades passed away last Monday morning. Monica Lovinescu, aged 85, died after spending months in the Charles Richet Hospital in Val d'Oise, 15 kilometers away from Paris. Although ill, she had attended the funeral of her husband Virgil Ierunca in Sepmber 2006 while in a hospital mobile bed. According to journalist Emil Hurezeanu, the diaries of Monica Lovinescu are most important documents of human experience beyond the Iron Curtain, but in tight connection to the Romanian reality. Film director Alexandru Solomon used Monica Lovinescu as star in a film produced three years ago, and he was impressed with the personality of this special lady: "When I met Mrs. Monica Lovinescu three years ago, I had the feeling she was powerful and precise, although she was physically weakened. But her voice and mind were unchanged. It was as clear as crystal that she would read and evaluate one at just a glance and she woud place one in a very well-cut hierarchy. I think this is what she did: create a hierarchy of values in Romanian culture, a hierarchy that survives." A target of the Securitate Monica Lovinescu, daughter of the well-known Romanian literary critic Eugen Lovinescu, was born in November 19, 1923. She became a journalist, a literary critic and a radio analyst. After graduating the Faculty of Letters in the University of Bucharest in 1946, she left for Paris in 1947 for a scholarship granted by the French government and in the early 1948 she asked for political exile in France. In her green years she would be a member of literary groups and stage avant-garde theatre plays. Her interest in Romanian literature and Communist ideology is mainly reflected in "East Europe", "Kontinent", "Preuves", "L'Alternative", "Les Cahiers de L'Est", "Temoignages", "La France Catholique" and more. She authored the chapter on Romanian theatre included in the "Encyclopedie de la Pleiade", Gallimard. In 1951-1975 she authored literature and music shows for the French Public Television and Radio and in 1962 she started her collaboration with Free Europe. In November 18, 1977, Monica Lovinescu was the target of Palestinian terrorists sent by the Securitate (Communist Secret Service in Romania), the main tool of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. She was taken to hospital while in coma. She restarted her radio activity after the recovery. She donanted her Paris house to Romania After 1990, her radio chronicles and the diaries she wrote under the Communist regime were published by the Humanitas Publishing House in Romania. One month ago Monica Lovinescu donated to Romania the house she owned in Paris together with her husband Virgil Ierunca, on condition that Romanian authorities should establish and preserve a fund of Romanian and foreign books, create a Romanian cultural center to be called the "Ierunca-Lovinescu Memorial", establish a yearly grant to bear the same name for Romanian students in France and provide accommodation to the students on scholarship. May she rest in peace ! (D.C.)