The name of the town comes from the term ząbr, which means a place where żubry (European bison) gather.

In 1807 it was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw, and after its dissolution in 1815, it fell to the Russian Partition of Poland.

The Polish 1st Legion's Infantry Regiment under the command of Edward Rydz-Śmigły was stationed in the town during 1917.

In the corners of the square machine guns were put on cars, and behind them horses were kept that belonged to the Polish unit.

According to the witness reports the horses were either driven by the Germans or blinded by the reflector lights.

At that time the Germans killed 800 Jews in the city, including community dignitaries, at the Glmbokih forest nearby.

[citation needed] At the beginning of September 1941 hundreds of Jews found "unfit for work", including the elderly and pregnant women, were killed at the nearby Rothke-Koski woods.

[citation needed] In the second half of 1942 the city's ghetto accepted Jews from Czyżew, and they were employed as forced labour.

In early November 1942 all the residents of the ghetto were transferred to an abandoned military camp, where some 14,000 to 17,000 Jews from the environment were concentrated in very harsh living conditions.

In 1944, the town was restored to Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s.