The reference to Jews in historical sources dates back to 1532. The oldest Jewish gravestone is from 1581. At the beginning of the 17^th century, the function of the rabbi of Dubno was performed by Jeszajahu ha Lewi Horowic. In 1649, during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, all Jews from Dubno were killed. Legend has it that the graves of the fallen were located near the eastern wall of the Great Synagogue in Dubno, and there was a custom of mourning them on Tisha B’Av.

The Jewish community soon reappeared under the protection of the Lubomirski dukes, who granted Jews with special privileges in 1699 and 1713. At the beginning of the 18^th century, the community was the largest in the Łuck District; it was represented at the Council of Four Lands.

The annual fairs held in Dubno transformed the town into a major commercial centre. One of the most eminent local preachers of the 18^th century was Jakob ben Wolf Kranz – the Maggid of Dubno. In 1765, there were 1,923 Jews living in the town, owning 170 houses. In 1795, after the Third Partition of Poland, Dubno found itself under the Russian rule.

The Jewish population of Dubno was rapidly growing (in 1790 – 2,325 people, in 1847 – 6,330 people, and in 1897 – 7,108 people). Most Jews lived off of grain and hops trade. In 1794, a Jewish printing house was opened in Dubno and operated for the next 30 years; in 1802, another printing house was founded.

In 1857, there were 15 synagogues and prayer houses in Dubno, as well as 22 cheders. The Hovevei Zion group was established in the town in 1893. In 1901, the town had a Torah Talmud and two male Jewish schools.

During World War I, the control over Dubno frequently passed from one side of the conflict to the other, which had a great impact on the Jewish population of the town. The pogroms erupted repeatedly, the most bloody being the ones carried out by the demoralised units of the Russian army in December 1917, and then in the summer of 1919. About 300 people were killed and wounded in the pogroms.

In the years 1921-1939, Dubno belonged to Poland. The Jewish community became an important centre of the socio-cultural life and Zionist activity in Volhynia. The town boasted the Jewish Cooperative Bank, a Jewish hospital, an orphanage, an old people’s home, a health centre, a Jewish grammar school with Polish as the language of instruction, schools run in Hebrew and Yiddish, Talmud Torah, and a kindergarten.

When the Soviet troops took over Dubno in September 1939, in accordance with the agreement between Germany and the USSR concerning the division of Poland, all Jewish political and social organisations were liquidated and their leaders were arrested; businesses and real estate were nationalised, charitable institutions were transferred to state authorities, and social activities were prohibited.

On the eve of the German occupation, about 12,000 Jews lived in Dubno. At the beginning of the war, a part of the Jewish population managed to evacuate to the eastern regions of the USSR.

On 25 June 1941, the German army seized Dubno. From the very first day of the occupation, the extermination of Jews started, with murders committed both by the local inhabitants and the German soldiers.

In the summer of 1941, a Judenrat was created. With its help, Germans collected high contributions from Jews, in cash and in the form of gold and silver wares. In the autumn and winter of 1941, more than a thousand Jews were killed.

On 4 April 1942, a ghetto was created in Dubno. On 27 May 1942, the German SS Einsatzgruppe murdered about 3,800 Jews at the outskirts of the town. In the summer of 1942, a resistance group was formed in the ghetto.

Still in the summer of 1942, a number of liquidation operations were carried out in Dubno. They were concluded on 24 October 1942. A detailed account of the mass murder was presented during the Nuremberg trial by a young German officer called Axel von dem Bussche.

After the liberation of the town, a small number of Jews returned from hiding and evacuation. According to the Ukrainian census of 2001, Dubno had no Jewish inhabitants[1.1].