Penka Kassabova, was a pioneer of early childhood education in Bulgaria. During WWII Penka took to her school four Jewish students, even though the \u2018Law for the defense of the nation\u2019 did not allow to admit Jewish students into higher education institutions.\u00a0One of these students was my mom Ika Comforty who lives in Tel Aviv, and who have stayed in touch with Penka all her life. My mom saw\u00a0Penka as the most influential person in her life. Penka’s values were passed to me by my mom as a child. They are very important to me today as an adult.<\/p>\n
Ms Kassabova, was the sister of Geo Millev, the great Bulgarian poet. In 1925-1928 she came to the US, to Evanston Illinois to study at the National College of Education.\u00a0It was then called National College of Kindergarten. When she returned to Bulgaria\u00a0she\u00a0became a teacher and later the\u00a0principal of the American Kindergarten in Sofia and the school for kindergarten teachers. The school was shut down\u00a0by the fascist regime in 1943, because\u00a0Penka admitted\u00a0Jewish students to her school, and for her refusal to let the pro-Nazi youth movement \u2018Branik\u2019 to recruit and operate in the school.\u00a0Her school was never reopened. Penka Kassabova\u00a0died in the year 2000 at age 99.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Penka Kassabova, was a pioneer of early childhood education in Bulgaria. During WWII Penka took to her school four Jewish students, even though the \u2018Law for the defense of the nation\u2019 did not allow to admit Jewish students into higher education institutions.\u00a0One of these students was my mom Ika Comforty who lives in Tel Aviv, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-role-models","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/theoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/theoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/theoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/theoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/theoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/theoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6902,"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/theoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2807\/revisions\/6902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/theoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/theoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/theoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/theoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}