Mir, Belarus
Mir is a town in Kareličy (Карэлічы) raion, Hrodna Voblast, Belarus (53°27′N 26°28′E / 53.450°N 26.467°E) about 85 kilometers southwest of the national capital, Minsk.
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. Mir's claim to fame in recent history is that it is the original home of the Mir yeshiva which operated there intermittently from 1815 until the fall of Poland in 1939. (Current incarnations of the yeshiva are located in New York City, United States and Jerusalem, Israel.)
Today Mir has little industry and is no longer an internationally renowned center of Jewish learning. Home to about 2,500 people today, none of whom are descended from the once thriving Jewish community, its primary attraction is the great number of memorials erected by the Soviet government as well as by various Jewish groups over the past half century.
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