Nevel is the administrative center of the eponymous district of the Pskov region. Founded in the 16th century. In the 17th-18th centuries, Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth fought for control over Nevel. Since 1772, the settlement has been under the control of the Russian Empire. A year later, it received the status of a city. From 1802 to 1924, it was part of the Vitebsk province.

Jews settled in the city from the middle of the 17th century. The Jewish population of the city increased in the 18th-19th centuries. The Russian government pursued a policy of resettlement of Jews from the countryside.

According to the Polish census of 1765, 388 Jews lived in Nevel. By 1850, the Jewish population had increased tenfold.

Jews were engaged in handicrafts, carriage, were millers, tenants and merchants. At the beginning of the 19th century, 400 Jewish merchant families lived in Nevel.

The Jews of Nevel were adherents of Lubavitch Hasidism. City rabbi Berets Hein (served in 1820-1866) graduated from a yeshiva in Lyubavichi. After the authorities closed the Lubavitch yeshiva, it was moved to Nevel.

According to the recollections of old-timers, every year a donation collector came to Nevel from Lyubavichi. He stayed with the wealthiest Hasidim. In the evening, local Jews came to listen to his stories about Hasidism.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews accounted for 70% of the population of Nevel. The city had 15 synagogues and houses of worship. According to eyewitnesses, in 1912, the city authorities stopped the spread of rumors about the blood libel, which appeared in the empire under the influence of the Beilis case. The girl who went to the police and accused her employer of carrying out bloody sacrifices was interrogated by the gendarmes and threatened with hard labor for libel.

With the outbreak of the First World War, the number of Jews in Nevel declined. According to the data of 1920, 11.3 thousand Jews lived in the city. Their share in the urban population was 57.5%.

During the 1920s, Jewish life in the city developed. There was a Jewish theater and a drama club, a library and two schools. By the 1930s, the Soviet government had liquidated synagogues and Jewish educational institutions.

The city was occupied on July 15, 1941. Five days later, the Nazis issued an order on the compulsory wearing of distinctive signs by Jews and a prohibition on communicating with the local population.

In August 1941, the occupants created a ghetto in the Golubaya Dacha Park outside the city. Mass shootings began in September 1941. About two thousand Jews perished in the vicinity of Nevel.