The town was conveniently located on one of the routes joining the capitals of the two united nations - Kraków and Vilnius.

In 1500 and 1544, Parczew was destroyed in Crimean Tatars raids, and in 1655, it was seized, ransacked and burned by the Swedes (see Deluge).

Following the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II in September 1939, the town was occupied by Germany.

On July 22, 1944, Parczew was liberated by the Home Army, and in the summer of 1945, the anti-Communist unit of Leon Taraszkiewicz attacked a local Urząd Bezpieczeństwa prison.

Just before the outbreak of World War II the Jewish community numbered 5,000, more than half of the town's population.

During the German occupation of Poland the Jews were first confined to a ghetto crammed with inhabitants of neighbouring settlements as well.

They were massacred in a mass shooting action and deported, at which point the town was declared Judenfrei ("free of Jews").

[8] The Parczew partisans anti-Nazi fighter group operated in the forests around the town, which included Jewish men and women who managed to escape the slaughter.