Rajgród [ˈrai̯ɡrut] is a town in Grajewo County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, Poland, with 1,609 inhabitants (as of June 2016), within the historic region of Podlachia.

According to the chronicler Wigand of Marburg, in 1360 King Casimir III the Great of Poland ordered the castellan of Wizna to build a defensive castle nearby.

[2] In 1568, Rajgród was granted a town charter, and a year later, following the Union of Lublin, it was returned, together with the region of Podlachia, to the Kingdom of Poland.

On 10 July 1794, during the Kościuszko Uprising, a party of patriotic nobles and townspeople was defeated here by a detachment of the Prussian Army.

After the Third Partition of Poland (1795), the town was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, but in 1807 it returned under Polish rule as part of the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw.

In early July a small SS contingent (2 to 10 men) arrived, and recruited several local Polish collaborators including Antoni Len and Jan Turon.

Many Jews managed to flee to other towns, including Grajewo, and when two SS officers arrived in late July to oversee the setup of a ghetto they ordered the Polish auxiliaries to find the escapees.

Over the next few days Polish auxiliary policeman Adamcewicz, acting on German orders, murdered as many as 50 Jews in Góra Rykowa in two separate actions.

The Jews of Rajgród, and surrounding villages, some 550 to 800 souls were concentrated in a crowded ghetto enclosed with barbed wire.