Mir, Belarus

Mir (Belarusian: Мір; Russian: Мир; Yiddish: מיר) is an urban-type settlement in Karelichy District, Grodno Region, Belarus.

During the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812, Russian Imperial cavalry, artillery and cossack regiments ambushed and defeated the Duchy of Warsaw 3 uhlan divisions (Battle of Mir (1812)).

[4] From 27 June 1941 until 7 July 1944, Mir was occupied by Nazi Germany and administered as a part of the Generalbezirk Weißruthenien of the Reichskommissariat Ostland.

With the city being occupied only 35 days after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, there was little time to escape, and Jews who had fled nearby settlements and western Poland had accumulated in Mir alongside the existing Jewish community.

[5] Three months after the occupation began, a ghetto was formally established within the city by German authorities, and all Jews living within the town – the amount of which had by then swollen to over 3,000 people – were forcibly resettled within it.

The fairs collapsed in 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the Belorussian Soviet Republic and murdered the Roma people of Mir.

Today, Mir has little industry and is no longer an internationally renowned center of Jewish learning or Roma horse trade.