Dieveniškės (in Lithuanian literally: ''Place of gods''; pl, Dziewieniszki; be, Дзевянішкі ''Dzevyanishki'') is a town in the

Vilnius County Vilnius County ( lt, Vilniaus apskritis) is the largest of the 10 counties of Lithuania, located in the east of the country around the city Vilnius. On 1 July 2010, the county administration was abolished, and since that date, Vilnius County re ...

of Lithuania, about from the

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

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 The Lithuanian nobility or szlachta ( Lithuanian: ''bajorija, šlėkta'') was historically a legally privileged hereditary elite class in the Kingdom of Lithuania and Grand Duchy of Lithuania (including during period of foreign rule 1795–191 ...

Mykolas Mingaila, possibly the son of Gedgaudas, later ruled by the

Goštautai The House of Goštautai (Lithuanian plural form), masculine Goštautas and feminine form Goštautaitė (''In Polish'' - Gastoldowie, later transformed into Gasztołdowie), Gochtovtt, were a Lithuanian family, one of the most influential magn ...

family. Stanislovas Goštautas visited Dieveniškės with his wife Barbara Radziwill ( lt, Barbora Radvilaitė), who used to pray in Dieveniškės church, built in the 16th century. According to the 1897 census, 75% of the village population were Jewish. The

shtetl A shtetl or shtetel (; yi, שטעטל, translit=shtetl (singular); שטעטלעך, romanized: ''shtetlekh'' (plural)) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before ...

had 2 synagogues. The Jews were murdered during the Holocaust in Lithuania. The people living in the Dieveniškės were ethnically mixed (Lithuanian, Polish, Belarusian), who happened to fall under Belarus’ authority, as this region was assigned to Belarus post-1939. After many requests by only the Lithuanian residents of the area (and not the others, since the majority of residents were Lithuanians), Belarus gave this area voluntarily to Lithuania in 1940. As the result, Dieveniškės becomes a 207-square-kilometre Lithuanian salient surrounded by and intruding some 30 kilometres into the Belarusian territory. At its neck, the “Lithuanian appendix” is barely 3 kilometres wide. And it remains part of Lithuania to this date. According to 1989 census, a little over 60 percent of people there considered they were Polish.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dieveniskes Towns in Lithuania Towns in Vilnius County Oshmyansky Uyezd Wilno Voivodeship (1926–1939) Holocaust locations in Lithuania