Dywin

Some Jews resided in Dywiń in the mid-16th century; more organized Jewish settlement dates from the later decades of the same century. In 1878 the town's 998 Jews comprised 40 percent of the total population. In the second half of the 19th century the economic growth of the town slowed due to its distance from a newly built railway line and major new roads. During the interwar years there were about 800 Jews in Dywiń, accounting for roughly one-third of the total population. Most of the Jews were apparently merchants. The Germans occupied Dywiń on June 24, 1941, several days after they invaded the USSR. They set up a ghetto there and then forced the Jews from surrounding villages to move into its confines, thus increasing the ghetto's population to about 1,000. The ghetto inmates were murdered in August 1942. Dywiń was liberated by the Red Army on July 21, 1944.