Peeva, Vela

(also V. Penka). Born Mar. 16, 1922, in Kamenitsa, now a section of the city of Velingrad; died May 3, 1944, in the Bialata-Skala region. Figure in the Bulgarian revolutionary youth movement; a Bulgarian national heroine.

Peeva attended the Pazardzhik Gymnasium. In 1941 she entered the University of Sofia, where she studied pedagogy and then geography. She became a member of the Workers’ Youth League in 1939 and the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1943. In the summer of 1942, Peeva joined an antifascist combat group that was operating in the Chepino Basin, and in April 1943 she joined the Anton Ivanov partisan detachment. She was killed in battle with the fascists.