August 15

History events
1899 — (9th of Elul, 5659) The Third Zionist Congress begins meeting in Basel.
1937 — (8th of Elul, 5697) Sha’ar HaNeveg (which was renamed Kfar Szold) a new agricultural village east of Gedera was established. It was the 17th village to be settled in 1937
1938 — (18th of Av, 5698) As Arab violence spirals to new levels of intensity, ….. six Jews were killed and two, both women, were seriously injured near Haifa this afternoon when a bus going to Mount Carmel was ambushed by Arabs while passing through a forest. It is believed several of those killed were Jewish special policemen. A bomb was detonated on the road running between Herzliah and Raananh wounding some of the 25 workers in a truck bound for a local orange grove. Several other acts of violence and sabotage took place including a bomb-throwing episode on the streets of Tel Aviv
1941 — (22th of Av, 5701) Нolocaust. ….. Heinrich Lohse, Reich commissioner for Eastern Territories of the Ostland (Eastern Europe) region, decrees that Jews must wear two yellow badges, one on the chest and one on the back; that Jews cannot own automobiles or radios; and that their presence in public places will be severely proscribed; A Jewish ghetto is established at Riga; Last of the remaining 25,000 Jews in Kovno were removed to Viampole. Each is allotted three square feet of living space; Six hundred Jews are taken from Stawiski and shot in nearby woods; A massacre begins at Rokiskis that leaves 3,200 men, women and children, shot by the next evening
1961 — (3th of Elul, 5721) Elections were held today for the fifth Knesset Ben-Gurion’s Mapai came in first with 34.7% of the vote which earned 42 seats. Herut, led by Menachem Begin and Liberal led by Peretz Bernstein tied for second with each getting a little more than 13% of the vote which translated into 17 seats for each party
1984 — (17th of Av, 5744) A car bomb was discovered on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem and defused about 10 minutes before it was to have exploded. In the car were about 12 kilograms of explosives and another three kilograms of iron nails
2005 — (10th of Av, 5765) Haaretz reported that the Israeli Defense Forces unit that is responsible for finding the remains of missing soldiers discovered the burial site of eight soldiers who died during the War of Independence. The missing eight died in fighting on May 13, 1948 near Kibbutz Nahshon. Their remains have been re-interred in cemeteries on Mount Herzl and Rosh Pina
2009 — (25th of Av, 5769) According to a report broadcast today on Voice of Israel government radio wealthy foreign Arabs have bought up hundreds of dunams of land in the Galilee, land, which was owned privately and which was zoned for agricultural use, was sold due to economic hardship

People
1342 — (12th of Elul, 5102) Simon ben Asher, astronomer, died
1868 — (27th of Av, 5628) S.A. Bierfield was lynched by the K.K.K. in Franklin TN. ….. This was the first such reported incident involving a Jew. “A masked mob of Ku Klux Klansmen broke into the dry goods store of S. A. Bierfield, a Russian Jew, in Franklin, Tennessee, and fatally shot both Bierfield and his Black clerk, Lawrence Bowman. The reason given by the lynchers was a false charge of Bierfield’s implication in a murder a few days earlier. But as the New York Times reported about a week later, the real reason for the lynching was that Bierfield was «an intelligent advocate of the present reconstruction policy of Congress and a friend to the freedmen of his neighborhood, among whom—he being a merchant—he commanded quite a trade, and perhaps found it expedient to keep one from among their number in his employ.» A Nashville newspaper account stated that Bierfield was «an active and prominent Republican, having considerable influence with the colored people. . . . Our informant says that was his only crime»
1992 — (16th of Av, 5752) Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian businessman ….. who saved more than 3,000 Jews from deportation to Nazi concentration camps in World War II, passed away today at his home in Padua. He was 82 years old. Mr. Perlasca died of a heart attack, The Associated Press reported. Trapped in Budapest late in the war by the fall of the fascist Italian Government, Mr. Perlasca, a livestock trader, joined in a plan conceived by international relief workers and diplomats from neutral countries to save as many Jews as possible from the Nazis. When the Spanish diplomatic representative fled Budapest in November 1944, Mr. Perlasca, who had been a volunteer in Franco’s army in the Spanish Civil War, persuaded Hungary to accept him as the Spanish representative, and in two months he issued travel documents to thousands of Jews to save them from deportation. In 1987 Mr. Perlasca, whose achievements had gone largely unnoticed, was made an honorary citizen of Israel and was honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum there. In 1990 he received the Medal of Remembrance of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council
2007 — (1th of Elul, 5767) Yad Vashem posthumously honored a Romanian reserve officer who blocked the deportation of Romanian Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II. Theodor Criveanu joined the Righteous Among the Nations group of non-Jews who rescued Jews from the Nazis