ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: Who was Lilyana Panitza and how did her job make it possible for her to save Bulgarian Jews during World War II?

Vladimir Danovsky is a theater and opera director, playwright, and theater educator. He was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and is the son of the famous Bulgarian-Jewish director Boyan Danovsky. He studied piano and musicology at the Sofia Music Academy and then specialized in directing at the German State Opera in Berlin. He has directed more than 50 productions in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Japan, as well as in his native Bulgaria.

After spending several years studying the history of the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews during World War II, Danovsky wrote The Salvation, a scenic passion that was first performed in 2012 at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, and later at various festivals throughout Germany. For this play he was awarded the European Tolerance Prize in 2011 and the Marion Samuel Prize in 2016.