Dubrovno

Jewish settlement in Dubrovno began in the mid-16th century. In 1801 a Jewish printing house was established in Dubrovno. In 1863 Menachem Usishkin, one of the leaders of Zionism, was born in the town.

This was one of the main centers for the production of talitot. In 1902 the Dneprovskaya Manufaktura weaving factory was established by the Jewish Colonization Association with purpose of productivizing the local Jewish population. Under the Soviets the factory began to employ non-Jewish workers, who by the mid-1930s comprised more than half of the workers. Still, until changes resulting from Soviet anti-religious policy in 1929, the day of rest at the factory remained Saturday. At the beginning of the 1930s the factory had its own newspaper published in both Belorussian and Yiddish. Dubrovno had also a government school with instruction in Yiddish.

In 1939 the Jewish population of Dubrovno was 2,119 or 21.4 percent of the town's total population.

Dubrovno was occupied by the Germans on July 16, 1941. Only a small minority of Dubrovno's Jews managed to flee before the occupation of the town. The Germans ordered the Jews to wear black armbands with a yellow Star of David. In the early fall of 1941 a ghetto was set up on Levoberegovaya Street and from there the ghetto inmates were taken for forced labor. On December 6, 1941 1,500 Jews were shot behind the yard of the local linen factory. In March 1942 the surviving skilled craftsmen and members of their families (totalling 300 people) were shot, either in small groups or individually.

Dubrovno was liberated by the Red Army on June 26, 1944.