Dieveniškės (in Lithuanian literally: ''Place of gods''; ; ''Dzevyanishki;''

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

: דיװענישאָק) is a town in the

Vilnius County Vilnius County () is the largest of the 10 counties of Lithuania, located in the east of the country around the city Vilnius and is also known as Capital Region or Sostinės regionas by the State Data Agency, Lithuanian statistics department and ...

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 ...

, about from the

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

ian border in the so-called Dieveniškės appendix. It is surrounded by the Dieveniškės Regional Park.

History

The estate of Dieveniškės was first mentioned in 1385 as a village of a Lithuanian noble Mykolas Mingaila, possibly the son of Gedgaudas, later ruled by the Goštautai family. Stanislovas Goštautas visited Dieveniškės with his wife Barbara Radziwill (), who used to pray in Dieveniškės church, built in the 16th century. According to the 1897 census, 75% of the village population was Jewish, and the town had two synagogues. The Jewish population was murdered during

the Holocaust in Lithuania The Holocaust resulted in the near total eradication of Lithuanian Jews, Lithuanian (Litvaks) and History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in ''Generalbezirk Litauen'' of the ''Reichskommissariat Ostland'' in the Occupation of Lithuania by Na ...

The people living in the Dieveniškės were ethnically mixed (Lithuanian, Polish, Belarusian), when the region was assigned to Belarus post-1939. During 1939–40, the town belonged to the

Byelorussian SSR The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR, Byelorussian SSR or Byelorussia; ; ), also known as Soviet Belarus or simply Belarus, was a republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). It existed between 1920 and 1922 as an independent state, and ...

. In April 1940 occupying Soviet authorities started deporting the town's residents to

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. At the beginning of the Nazi occupation, most of the Jews of Dieveniškės were forced out and imprisoned in the ghetto of Voranava and were executed on May 5, 1942. In 1944 the partisans of the

Armia Krajowa The Home Army (, ; abbreviated AK) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) established in the ...

captured Dieveniškės several times and harassed the local Lithuanian population. According to local legend,

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

smoking pipe A smoking pipe, often simply referred to as a pipe, is used to inhale (or taste) the smoke of a burning substance, typically (though not exclusively) used to consume a Psychoactive drug, psychoactive substance; this most commonly refers to a to ...

was lying on the map when the eastern Lithuanian borders were drawn in the Kremlin in 1939. Nobody dared to move it, so they drew a line around the smoking pipe. According to a more credible account, the Lithuanians of this mixed-ethnic region asked to be incorporated into Lithuania. Their request reached the Soviet authorities and on 6 November 1940 Dieveniškės was returned to Lithuania. This was done on the same day when Lithuania was

annexed Annexation, in international law, is the forcible acquisition and assertion of legal title over one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory. In current international law, it is generally held to ...

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. As a result, Dieveniškės became a 207-square-kilometre Lithuanian salient surrounded by and projecting some 30 kilometres into the Belarusian territory. At its narrowest point, the “Lithuanian appendix” is less than 3 kilometres wide. In 1990, after Lithuania regained independence, borders with

were once again adjusted. According to the 1989 census, slightly over 60 percent of residents considered themselves Polish. In 2006 the coat of arms of Dieveniškės was adopted by a decree of the President of the Republic of Lithuania.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dieveniskes Towns in Lithuania Towns in Vilnius County Šalčininkai District Municipality Holocaust locations in Lithuania