Before World War II, the precise number of Jews living in Horodziej is not known, but it was probably somewhere between 700 and 1,000, the third of the total population. After the invasion of Poland the village was under Soviet occupation from 1939 to 1941, German occupation from 1941 to 1944 and again Soviet occupation from 1944 to 1945, when in accordance to the Potsdam Agreement it was taken from Poland and annexed to the Soviet Union.