During the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II, Rawa was invaded by Germany, and already on September 10, German troops carried out a massacre of 40 inhabitants (17 Poles and 23 Jews) in the town. In mid-September 1939, the Germans established a prisoner-of-war camp for captured Polish soldiers in the town. Under German occupation, the town was administered as part of the Radom District of the General Government. Some of the Poles expelled from the Gostyń County in German-annexed Greater Poland in December 1939 were deported to Rawa. During the "AB-Aktion", Germans arrested 20 Poles in mid-June 1940, among whom was parish priest Wacław Zienkowski, who joined the Polish resistance movement, helped Polish prisoners of war escape from the local German POW camp, and rescued local Jews. He was murdered in August 1940 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.