Shargorod is the center of the district of the same name, located 90 km from Vinnytsia. The settlement appeared here at the end of the 15th century. In the 16th century, the Polish king Stephen Báthory ordered to build a castle on the site of the settlement. In 1588, the city received the Magdeburg Law.

A year later, a synagogue was built in the city, which became part of Shargorod's fortifications. Its wall was moved forward beyond the line of defense. In 1595, thanks to the synagogue, the Jewish population managed to survive the attack of the Cossacks. During the Turkish rule in the 1670s and 1690s, the Turks used the synagogue building as a mosque. In the 1930s, the Soviet government transferred the building to one of the local enterprises. In 2012, it was returned to the Jewish community.

By the 17th century, Shargorod's Jewish community was one of the largest in the region. It suffered from the pogroms of the Krivonos Cossacks in 1648 and the Haidamaks in 1734. In 1672-1699, the city was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Immigrants from Turkish lands replenished the Jewish population.

Since the beginning of the 18th century, Shargorod has been one of the centers of the spread of Hasidism. One of Besht's disciples served as the local rabbi. Sabbatians and Francoists inhabited the city.

In 1793, the settlement came under the control of the Russian Empire. By the end of the 19th century, 3.9 thousand Jews lived here. They owned all the trading establishments, hotels and warehouses of the city.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were nine synagogues in Shargorod, and Jewish educational institutions were operating. In 1926, 2.6 thousand Jews lived here, who constituted 61% of the population. By the 1930s, Jewish schools and synagogues were closed.

By 1939, 74% of the local population was Jewish. With the outbreak of the war, local Jews failed to evacuate. In the summer of 1941, the city was occupied. About 1.8 thousand Jews remained in it. Shargorod fell into the Romanian zone of occupation, so Jews brought from other Romanian territories ended up in the local ghetto. As a result, about 7 thousand Jews ended up in the city.

The Shargorod ghetto was a unique phenomenon. Its leaders managed to come to an agreement with the authorities. Jews were used in various jobs and did not carry out extermination aktions. The ghetto had its own pharmacy, hospitals, police and a sanitary-epidemiological station. In the winter of 1941-1942, thanks to the efforts of the ghetto leadership, it was possible to contain the spread of the typhus epidemic. 1.4 thousand people died, but most of the prisoners managed to survive.

In the early 1990s, there were about 700 Jews in the city.