In September 1939, after the partition of Poland between Nazi Germany and the USSR, Rakov came under Soviet jurisdiction and received the status of an urban settlement. More than 900 Jews lived in it.

The Nazis captured Rakov on June 26, 1941. In the first days of the occupation, the local police robbed Jews of Rakov. In July 1941, the invaders organized the first executions of Jews. According to German sources, about 60 communists and Jews were killed in the Rakov area.

In August 1941, the Jewish population of Rakov was replenished with Minsk Jews. On August 24, 1941, the Nazis detained a group of refugees who hoped to wait out the occupation in the countryside. According to sources, 14 people were shot on the spot. The rest were sent to Rakov.

In August 1941, the invaders rounded up all the Jews of Rakov into a ghetto, created on the territory of the local synagogue. The prisoners became victims of the actions of local policemen, who regularly organized requisitions, and on September 26, 1941, Torah scrolls were burned in the central square of the village, forcing the Jewish girls who were driven to the place of the aktion to dance and sing.

Three days later, the invaders sent about a hundred men from the ghetto, aged 16 to 50, to dig ditches two kilometers from the city. There they were shot and buried. In the post-war years, the remains of the dead were transferred to the local Jewish cemetery.

The few surviving Jews were brought to Rakov by the Nazis and forced to sing and dance. They were then laid on the floor and randomly shot. One of the prisoners was beheaded.

The ghetto was liquidated at the beginning of February 1942. On February 4, the head of the local police issued an order according to which the Jews were to come to one of Rakov's synagogues to be sent to Minsk. They must have valuables with them.

When the ghetto prisoners gathered, the police told them to leave their things and go into the synagogue building. The doors of the synagogue were blocked. The building was doused with gasoline and set on fire. Those who tried to get out were killed by the police.

Also in the German archives, the report of the SD team on the destruction on February 4, 1942 in Rakov of a group of 100 Jews who were in custody in one of the houses was preserved.

Several Jews managed to escape death. They joined the partisan detachments.

According to various sources, between 900 and 1,000 Jews died in Rakov. In 1965, a monument to the victims of the Holocaust was erected on the site of the burned synagogue.