Jewish merchants lived in Międzyrzec beginning around the early 1500s as they settled in the town located along a Medieval trade route. By the mid- to late-1600s, the Jewish community had established a prayer house and a Jewish quarter called Szmulowizna. Income from trade allowed the community to support a yeshiva (school for the study of religious texts) and one of the first Hebrew-language printing presses in Poland. The life of this early community was tragically cut short when nearly all 300 Jewish residents were murdered during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648 to 1649.

The Jewish community of Międzyrzec recovered in the 1700s as Polish nobility invited Jewish merchants to stimulate the local economy. In 1795, Poland lost the town to the Austrian Empire and Międzyrzec became part of the Russian Empire in 1815. The number of Jewish residents grew from some 2,900 in 1820 to more than 9,000 in 1897, comprising from two-thirds to nearly 80 percent of the total population.

In the 1800s, Międzyrzec became an internationally recognized site of brush and bristle making, products that were used in items such as hairbrushes, paintbrushes and brooms. Jewish men also owned and worked in flour mills, copper foundries, tanneries and sawmills. Trade benefitted from the construction of a surfaced intercity road and a new train line linking the town to Warsaw.

International trade links may be one reason that the Jewish Hasidic movement, with its focus on traditional dress and customs, gained fewer followers in Międzyrzec than in other Polish-Jewish communities. Regardless of whether they adhered to the Hasidic or a more assimilated lifestyle, Jews actively supported the Polish rebellion against Russia in January 1863. Jewish bristle factory workers again resisted authority in the early 1900s, organizing multiple strikes to protest long 17- to 18-hour days and miserable working conditions.

During World War I (1914-1918), Międzyrzec was occupied by Germany. The brush factories were closed and thousands lost their jobs. After the war, Russian and Polish forces fought for control of the town. Międzyrzec was ultimately incorporated into the newly independent country of Poland, but Jews faced harassment and beatings as retribution for their alleged support of Russia.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the majority Jewish population (roughly 75 percent of the town’s total) continued to operate and find jobs in the brushworks and other factories. Educated Jewish men became doctors, dentists, pharmacists and lawyers. In 1927, Jews won 17 of 24 seats on the town council. Many were followers of the Zionist movement that pushed for the creation of a Jewish state. Numerous periodicals were published in the Jewish language of Yiddish and families had the option of sending their children to Yiddish- or Hebrew-language schools.

World War II began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Soviet forces occupied Międzyrzec on September 17, but within a few weeks German forces retook the town and some 2,000 Jews fled eastward with the Soviet army.

Under Nazi rule, thousands of Jewish men who stayed in Międzyrzec were sent to forced labor camps. Mass deportations to the killing centers of Treblinka and Majdanek began in May 1942. That October, about 4,000 Jewish residents were crowded into a ghetto in the historical Jewish district of Szmulowizna. The ghetto was liquidated in May 1943 when approximately 3,000 people were either shot or deported to Treblinka. In July, Nazis declared Międzyrzec “Judenrein,” or free of Jews.

Ninety nine percent of the prewar Jewish population of more than 13,000 in Międzyrzec was murdered in the Holocaust. Jewish buildings were destroyed and gravestones from the Jewish cemetery were used to pave roads.