According to historical data, this small Bessarabian town, founded in 1792, was originally built as a Russian fortress on the banks of the Dniester River. When the borders of the empire moved far ahead, Dubăsari lost its importance as a fortress and became one of the centers of trade in Transnistria. The first Jews began to appear in it around the beginning of the 19th century. In 1847, about 2,500 Jews lived in Dubăsari. According to the census of the Russian Empire in 1897, the Jewish community in Dubăsari numbered more than 5200 people (approximately 43% of all residents). Traditionally, Jews were engaged in small-scale handicrafts and trade, some rafted wood and traded in grain, which was sent by barges along the Dniester. Jews owned pharmacies, haberdashery, manufactories, butchers and grocers. The city had a Talmud Torah, a synagogue, men's and women's schools.

The Jews of Dubăsari were often subjected to pogroms - in 1903 and 1905, and, of course, during periods of revolutionary unrest and civil war. Between 1920 and 1922 there was a massive migration of Jews from Ukraine to Romania. Most of them passed through Dubăsari, and many local Jews joined them.

Despite this, according to the data for 1926, there were 3,630 Jews in the city (over 80%), and by the beginning of the Second World War, due to refugees, the community was already about 8,000 people. In the first days of the war, more than 1,300 Jewish men were drafted into the ranks of the Red Army, and many of them went to local partisan detachments and the underground. Some Jewish families managed to evacuate before the arrival of the Germans.

German and Romanian units entered Dubăsari at the end of July 1941, at that time there were still about 2,000 Jews in the city. The occupiers began bullying the Jewish part of the inhabitants and exterminating them already in the first days after the capture of the city, creating a ghetto on the territory of the former tobacco factory.

At the end of August, a special "Einsatzkommando" of the Germans arrived in Dubăsari, which, together with the Romanian gendarmes, staged mass actions to shoot Jews. During September, several executions were carried out, as a result, the Jewish population of the city was destroyed. Also, in 1942-43, the Germans deported to Dubăsari many Jews from other parts of Bessarabia and Europe, all of them were also shot shortly after their arrival.

After the war, a little over 150 Jews returned to the city. Through their efforts, and also thanks to the help of emigrants, in 1956, at the site of the mass execution of Jews, a memorial was created in memory of the dead. There is also a memorial to the victims in Dubăsari near Jerusalem.

During the period of mass migration in the 1970s-80s and early 2000s, most Dubăsari Jews emigrated to Israel, the United States and European countries. Nevertheless, today there are Jews in Dubăsari, there is a small local community that maintains and preserves the Jewish traditions of this ancient shtetl.