The first known Jewish merchants arrived in the Polish town of Kraśnik in the 1530s. They traded in grain, salt and fish while craftsmen sold their handmade fabrics, soaps and candles. Jews began to make payments of spices to local authorities in exchange for protection from non-Jews who would steal from Jewish homes during the Christian observance of Good Friday.

By the end of the 1500s, the Jewish community had built a wooden synagogue near the central market square. However, Jews were banned from living in the center of Kraśnik after a Jewish man was accused of setting a town fire in 1637. Jewish residents were massacred during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648 to 1654. The next year, the town was invaded by Swedish forces. Only about 50 Jews were counted in Kraśnik by 1674.

The Jewish population of Kraśnik recovered in the 1700s, especially after a 1740 law allowed Jews to live and trade freely. The Great Synagogue of 1654 was rebuilt and an additional building (the Lesser Synagogue) was added for prayer and study. By 1787, the Jewish population of about 2,400 made up more than 60 percent of the town’s approximately 3,800 residents.

Kraśnik was absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1815 and became an important center of the Orthodox Jewish movement known as Hasidism. Followers maintained traditional customs and men kept long beards and side curls. Toward the end of the 1800s, many Jewish laborers found work building new railways or military camps for the Russian Empire.

During World War I (1914-1918) Kraśnik was the site of violent battles between the Russian and Austrian armies. Russian forces killed both rabbis and the town was occupied by Austria for three years. Many Jewish families relied on aid from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

After the war, Kraśnik was incorporated into the newly re-established country of Poland. Multiple charities served the Jewish population of roughly 4,000 in the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to the Great Synagogue, worshippers could attend 17 private prayer houses. Jewish families often sent their boys to a cheder (Jewish elementary school).

The 1920s and 1930s also saw the rise of violent antisemitism, especially as the Nazi party gained popularity and power in Germany. Many Jews in Kraśnik and across Poland joined the Zionist party that fought for an independent Jewish state. The popular Bund organization encouraged the use of the Jewish language of Yiddish.

World War II began when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. German soldiers arrived in Kraśnik on September 15, the second day of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year). Nazis burned sacred texts in the synagogue while requiring Jews to watch. In August 1940, Nazis forced all Jewish residents into a ghetto. Deportations to the killing center of Bełżec began in April 1942. Thousands at a time were ordered onto railcars and sent to their deaths in the gas chambers.

In the fall of 1942, Nazis established a forced labor camp at Budzyń, a factory district of Kraśnik. In November, an estimated 500 hundred Jews were transferred to labor camps while some 200 were shot in the Jewish cemetery. As the ghetto was liquidated, the majority of the surviving residents were sent to be murdered at Bełżec. Some escaped to the surrounding woods, but few survived Nazi gunfire.

Soviet forces marching from the east took control of Kraśnik and the surrounding territory in late July 1944. Jews continued to be attacked and killed under Soviet administration. At the end of the war, the synagogue was converted into a workshop for local crafts. The Jewish community had been annihilated.