Švenčionėliai () is a city in

Švenčionys district municipality Švenčionys (; ; known also by several Švenčionys#Etymology, alternative names) is a city in eastern Lithuania, and capital of the Švenčionys district municipality, located north of Vilnius. , it had a population of 4,065 of which about 17% ...

, in eastern

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

10 km west of

Švenčionys Švenčionys (; ; known also by several Švenčionys#Etymology, alternative names) is a city in eastern Lithuania, and capital of the Švenčionys district municipality, located north of Vilnius. , it had a population of 4,065 of which about 17% ...

. The river Žeimena flows through Švenčionėliai.

History

On 10 July 1920, it was the site of a battle of the

Polish–Soviet War The Polish–Soviet War (14 February 1919 – 18 March 1921) was fought primarily between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, following World War I and the Russian Revolution. After the collapse ...

, won by the Russians. Afterwards, in the interwar period, Nowe Święciany, as it was known in Polish, was administratively located in the Święciany County in the Wilno Voivodeship of Poland. After the joint German-Soviet

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...

, which started

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

in September 1939, the town was occupied by the Soviets, who handed it over to Lithuania, to eventually re-occupy it in 1940, then from 1941 it was occupied by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

and in 1944 it was re-occupied by the Soviet Union. In 1940, there were around 1,000 Jews, i.e. 20 percent of the total population. All of them were murdered in October 1941 in the Švenčionėliai massacre.

References

Holocaust locations in Lithuania Švenčionys District Municipality {{VilniusCounty-geo-stub