The first written mention of Bratslav dates back to 1362. City status was granted
Magdeburg Rights in 1564. Bratslav belonged to the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania until the
Lublin Union of 1569, when it became a
voivodeship center in the
Crown of the Kingdom of Poland as part of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the early 16th century, the
Starosta of Bratslav and
Vinnytsia (Winnica) was
Hetman Kostiantyn Ostrozky, who commanded Polish–Lithuanian army in the
Battle of Orsha. Nevertheless, Ostrozky was unable to protect Bratslav and its castle from destruction in 1497, when the town was raided by
Crimean Tatars. The castle was rebuilt and reinforced by order of Polish King
Alexander I Jagiellon, but it was destroyed once again, in 1551, during a Tatar raid commanded by
Khan Devlet I Giray, after which Bratslav turned into a desert. In 1564, Bratslav was granted
Magdeburg rights, and five years later, following the
Union of Lublin, it was annexed by the
Kingdom of Poland, becoming capital of the
Bratslav Voivodeship, which existed for over 200 years. During this time, Bratslav (then named Bracław in
Polish) by the authorities, was property of Polish kings, and was ruled by the starostas. In 1570, a special commission of the Polish
Sejm marked boundaries of the Bratslav Voivodeship. In the west, it reached the
Dniestr and the Murachwa rivers, in the north it went along the so-called Black Tatar Trail. With top-quality soil, the so-called
chernozem, Bracław Voivodeship was the most fertile region of
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1589 in
Warsaw, the Sejm granted coat of arms to the town: a cross in red field, with blue shield in the middle. In 1598, Polish Parliament decided to move the seat of local courts and
sejmiks from Bratslav to Vinnytsia, and as a result, Winnica became a de facto capital of the voivodeship, even though it was still named after Bracław. On 5 October 1594
Zaporozhian Cossacks under
Severyn Nalyvaiko murdered, near
Bratslav Castle, a
tabor of the local
Polish nobility, who tried to escape the
Nalyvaiko Uprising. In 1648, during the
Bohdan Khmelnytsky rebellion, Bracław became a
Cossack regimental city and centre of
Bratslav Regiment, part of the Ukrainian
Hetman state. Following the
war between Poland and the Tsardoom of Russia, in 1667 Bratslav once again became part of the former under the terms of the
Treaty of Andrusiv. Between 1672 and 1699 the city was ruled by the
Ottoman Empire, later returning under Polish control once again. It became part of the
Russian Empire after the
Second Partition of Poland in 1793, along with the rest of the formerly Polish
Right-bank Ukraine. Under Russia, Bratslav was an
uezd (district) center in the
Podolia Governorate. As the city had no access to a
railroad, its importance and population gradually declined. Bratslav is famous in
Judaism as the place where
Rabbi Nachman lived and taught between 1802 and 1810. Rabbi Nachman was the founder of one of the major branches of
Hasidism,
Breslover Hasidism, and an author of Jewish mystical works. After the 1917 Russian revolution, Judaism became strongly persecuted. The history of this persecution is well illustrated by the life of Bratslav rabbi Moishe Yankel Rabinovich who served as a rabbi from 1919 to 1968. In December 1919 Bratslav was the site of a battle between
Zaporozhian Corps and
Denikin's army. In 1926 Bratslav had a population of 7,842 (Source=Columbia-Lippincott Gazetteer). During World War II, Bratslav was occupied by German and Romanian armies on 22 July 1941, and was made into a ghetto for Jews of Bratslav and its vicinities. According to Romanian reports, there were 747 Jews in Bratslav in the end of December 1941. On 1 January 1942 most Jews were transferred to an extermination camp, and 50 people were drowned in the South Bug river. Two labor camps for German construction companies Todt-Dorman and Horst und Jessen were opened in August 1942. They hosted about 1,200 Jews deported from Romania, as well as about 300
Ukrainian Jews. The labor schedule was designed to exhaust all prisoners: work in masonry, without days off, from dawn till dusk, with a 30-minute lunch break. On 23 September 1942 all elderly and children were shot in a neighboring forest. The executions continued regularly after that date. In April 1943, Todt-Dorman camp was closed, and the prisoners were transferred to Horst und Jessen. Bratslav was part of
Transnistria Governorate in
Kingdom of Romania till its liberation on 17 March 1944 by
Red Army. Until 26 January 2024, Bratslav was designated
urban-type settlement. On this day, a new law entered into force which abolished this status, and Bratslav became a rural settlement. == Population ==