it featured a shield, a hand holding a weigh and the Cio?ek Coat of Arms, a personal coat of arms of the monarch. In the effect of the Partitions of Poland of 1795, the town was annexed by Imperial Russia. During the November Uprising it was liberated by a local priest Jasi?ski and Colonel Count Karol Prze?dziecki with help of town population. However, in April 1831 they were forced to withdraw to the Naliboki forest in face of Russian offensive. After a minor skirmish with Polish-Lithuanian rearguard under Stelnicki, the Russian punitive expeditionary force of some 1500 officers and soldiers entered the town and proceeded to burn the town and massacre the civilian population. Some 500 people, women,children and elderly seeking refuge in the Dominican Cathloic Church were massacred there, and even the local priest was murdered, nothing is known about the fate of the Jewish citizens. After this destruction the town was somewhat repopulated and received a new coat of arms in 1845 in recognition of its rather smallish growth. Gradually rebuilt, it never recovered from the losses and by the end of 19th century it was rather a provincial town, inhabited primarily by Jewish immigrants from other parts of Russia, from 'beyond the pale'. In 1912 the local Jewish community built a large synagogue.
After the end of World War I on the German-Russo front in 1917 and withdrawal of the German army in 1919, the Bolshevik activity threatened the town under Polish jurisdiction. Consequently Polish armed forces battled invading Bolsheviks, and there were graves of Polish soldiers who had died in that struggle. Finally after the Polish-Bolshevik War ending, was restored to Poland by the Treaty of Riga. Between the Polish Defensive War of 1939 and 1941 the town was seized by the USSR and then until 1944 by Nazi Germany. During the very end of the Soviet occupation NKVD - night of 22nd onto 23 June 1941, murdered and buried in one grave 57 Polish prisoners from the local
