Historical documents first note the presence of Jews in Kopyl in 1720, though the first Jewish families may have arrived a century earlier. The town was an important trading center where Jews lived among a mixed population of Eastern Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics and Muslim Tatars. 

Kopyl and the surrounding areas were annexed to the Russian Empire in 1793. In the 1800s, the town became known for making a dark green linen called “Astrohonke” as well as a white linen used for Jewish women’s head coverings. Jewish traders worked with Belarusian weavers to sell local fabrics in nearby cities and villages. Other Jewish residents made a living as tailors, carpenters or coach drivers. Famed Jewish writer Mendele Mocher Sforim was born in Kopyl in 1836.

Jewish religious life in Kopyl centered around the synagogue in the center of town, with its colorfully painted interior and complex of other religious buildings such as a mikvah (ritual bath). The kloize, or Jewish study hall, was the only stone building in town. Many wooden structures burned down in the ruinous fires of 1845, 1865 and 1886.

In 1897, the approximately 2,600 Jewish residents of Kopyl made up nearly 60 percent of the town’s total population of some 4,400. By the late 1800s, many Jewish and non-Jewish residents of Kopyl suffered from unemployment and poverty. The political movements of socialism and Zionism (the quest for an independent Jewish state) grew increasingly popular.

Kopyl found itself along the front lines of battle during World War I (1914-1918). The Russian Empire accused Jews of treason and war crimes, and tens of thousands, including some from Kopyl, were exiled to the Russian interior. In 1917, socialists of the Russian Revolution overthrew the Tsar and installed a communist government.

After World War I, Kopyl became part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Widespread poverty and unemployment continued throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Government efforts to “Sovietize” the local population included Jewish branches of communist organizations and a traveling school that visited the town in 1927.

When World War II started in 1939, the approximately 1,400 Jewish residents of Kopyl made up about 28 percent of the total population of around 5,100. In June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Soon after the German army reached Kopyl, some 26 Jews were shot and killed in a nearby forest.

The next month, Nazi officials gave all Jewish residents in Kopyl three days to move within the boundaries of the designated ghetto. All Jews were required to wear an armband with the Star of David, and Jewish men were conscripted into forced labor chopping firewood, cleaning toilets and mucking horse stalls. Overcrowding, starvation and disease devastated Jewish families.

Around late summer or early fall 1941, some 300 people were shot in the nearby forest, including Jewish men, women and children and some non-Jewish Russians and Belarusians. Then, on March 25, 1942, an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 Jews were assembled in the Kopyl synagogue. Almost all were killed over the next few days. A few who escaped joined a group of partisans who hid in the woods using guerrilla tactics against German forces. Partisans successfully laid siege to the town for two weeks in May 1942 before being overcome by German forces.

On the night of July 22 to 23, the Kopyl ghetto was liquidated. Some Jews resisted with smuggled-in weapons and set the ghetto on fire, helping an estimated 200 escape. Tragically, the rest were murdered.

The more than 200-year-old Jewish community of Kopyl had been annihilated in only 13 months of Nazi occupation.