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Jews in Rakov, Belarus

The settlement was founded in the XIV century. Until 1793 - as part of Poland. From 1793 to 1921 - the Russian Empire. From 1921 to 1939 - under the jurisdiction of Poland. Since 1939 it has been part of Belarus.

The Jewish community of Rakov is mentioned in documents in 1623 in connection with a regular fair held in the village. Until the second half of the 17th century, the Jews of Minsk were forbidden to have their own rabbi and courts, and the Minsk community turned to the Rakov rabbi for help. The first known rabbi of Rakov was Shmuel Weze. With the strengthening of the Minsk community, the Rakov one came under its control on administrative and religious issues.

The Jews of Rakov made money on farming and handicraft production. By the end of the 19th century, they made up 60% of Rakov's population. There were 2,000 Jews in the village. It is known from the newspapers of the 1880s that the Hovevei Zion charitable society and the funeral Chevra Kadisha operated in Rakov. In 1880 a Jewish school was opened. At the beginning of the 20th century there was a library.

The Jews of Rakov, in anticipation of pogroms, created a self-defense detachment from local youth in 1905 and secretly bought weapons. But the rioters did not reach the village. During the years of reaction that followed the 1905 revolution, Jews of Rakov began to emigrate to the United States.

Before World War I, the city was a center for the production of agricultural machinery and pottery, which Jewish merchants of Rakov sold in Minsk, Vitebsk, Mogilev, Smolensk and Chernigov districts.

With the outbreak of the First World War, Rakov became a border town, where Jews evicted from the frontline flocked. The production of agricultural machinery fell into decline. In the autumn of 1915, the Russian army was defeated and the city, located on the Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow road, was filled with refugees. Local Jews organized a Relief Committee, which collected funds to help those affected by the war.

In the 1920s, according to the Soviet-Polish agreements, Rakov came under the jurisdiction of Poland. The period from 1920 to 1924, until the parties strengthened the borders, is called the "golden age" of Rakov smuggling. The Jews switched from producing agricultural machinery and pottery to smuggling food from Poland into starving Soviet Belarus.

If at the end of the 19th century 2.1 thousand Jews lived in Rakov, by the 1930s there were less than 1 thousand of them left. In 1939, after the partition of the Polish lands by the USSR and Germany, Rakov came under Soviet jurisdiction. The new government destroyed most of the community institutions in two years.

More than 1,000 Jews died in Rakov during the Holocaust.