Mir (; ; ) is a town in the Karelichy District (Карэліцкі раён) of Grodno Region, Belarus on the banks of Miranka River, about 85 kilometers southwest of the national capital, Minsk. History Mir village was founded sometime prior to 1345. It is home to a late medieval castle, which made the town the target of many attacks over the centuries. The town belonged to the Illinič family (Korczak coat of arms) first and then to the Radziwiłł family. It was destroyed by the Swedish forces in 1655 (Deluge) and again by the Swedes during the Great Northern War in 1706. In 1792, the Lithuanian division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth army under Józef Judycki was routed by the invading Imperial Russian army corps under Boris Mellin (see Battle of Mir). 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)). The retreating Russians, withdrawing east, abandoned the town and destroyed the castle with gunpowder. During the Middle Ages it was first located in the Principality of Polotsk, after the Battle on the river Nemiga in the Principality of Minsk, then was taken over by Kievan Rus' but after the Mongol Invasion the Rus' rule diminished and since 1242 Mir belonged to the expanding and dynamic Duchy of Lithuania. In 1569, along with the rest of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Mir became a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1795, Mir was acquired by the Russian Empire as a result of the Third Partition of Poland. From 1921 until 1939, Mir was part of the Second Polish Republic. On 17 September 1939, the town was occupied by the Red Army and, on 14 November 1939, incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR. In the 1920s, somewhere around 3000 Jews lived in the town. By the eve of World War II however, the Jewish population had decreased to around 2000 people. 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. Three months after the occupation began, a