Švenčionys (; ; known also by several alternative names) is a city 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 ...

, and capital of the

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% ...

, located north of

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

. , it had a population of 4,065 of which about 17% were part of the

Polish minority in Lithuania The Poles in Lithuania (, ), also called Lithuanian Poles, estimated at 183,000 people in the 2021 Lithuanian census or 6.5% of Lithuania's total population, are the country's largest minority group, ethnic minority. During the Polish–Lithuani ...

Etymology

There are two established hypotheses about the etymology of the Švenčionys name: one that it is the name of the nearby lake Šventas (literally: ''saint'') with the addition of the Lithuanian

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

-onys; another is that it is derived from the personal name, Švenčionis. In other languages the name is rendered as , , , , and .

History

One of the oldest towns in the

Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a sovereign state in northeastern Europe that existed from the 13th century, succeeding the Kingdom of Lithuania, to the late 18th century, when the territory was suppressed during the 1795 Partitions of Poland, ...

, the settlement was a major center of Nalšia. Grand Duke

Vytautas Vytautas the Great (; 27 October 1430) was a ruler of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He was also the prince of Grodno (1370–1382), prince of Lutsk (1387–1389), and the postulated king of the Hussites. In modern Lithuania, Vytautas is revere ...

settled

Lipka Tatars The Lipka Tatars are a Turkic ethnic group and minority in Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus who originally settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the beginning of the 14th century. The first Tatar settlers tried to preserve their Pagan tradi ...

in the town and built a Catholic church in 1414. The place grew from the 14th to 16th centuries, becoming the site of a local court and monastery. After the Third Partition of Poland–Lithuania in 1795, Švenčionys came under Russian rule. From 1801 the town was part of the Russian Vilna Governorate. During the 1812

French invasion of Russia The French invasion of Russia, also known as the Russian campaign (), the Second Polish War, and in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812 (), was initiated by Napoleon with the aim of compelling the Russian Empire to comply with the Continenta ...

Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...

stayed in the town for 12 hours to write orders and receive an envoy from the

King of Naples The following is a list of rulers of the Kingdom of Naples, from its first Sicilian Vespers, separation from the Kingdom of Sicily to its merger with the same into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Kingdom of Naples (1282–1501) House of Anjou ...

. The town was one of the main centers of the

November Uprising The November Uprising (1830–31) (), also known as the Polish–Russian War 1830–31 or the Cadet Revolution, was an armed rebellion in Russian Partition, the heartland of Partitions of Poland, partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. ...

(1830–1831) in Poland and Lithuania against the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. It grew significantly after completion of the Saint Petersburg–Warsaw Railway in 1862, but eventually was out-competed by Švenčionėliai, which grew up around the train station. At the turn of the 20th century the town had one

Greek Orthodox Greek Orthodox Church (, , ) is a term that can refer to any one of three classes of Christian Churches, each associated in some way with Greek Christianity, Levantine Arabic-speaking Christians or more broadly the rite used in the Eastern Rom ...

church and one

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

church. During World War I, it was the location of the German Sventiany Offensive. The city was part of the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...

for most of the

interwar In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...

period. It was a

powiat A ''powiat'' (; ) is the second-level unit of local government and administration in Poland, equivalent to a county, district or prefecture (Local administrative unit, LAU-1 ormerly Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, NUTS-4 ...

centre in Wilno Voivodeship as Święciany under Polish times between 1920 and 1939. It had a significant Jewish population (according to the 1897 Russian census – 52%), but during

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 ...

, under German occupation, the

Švenčionys Ghetto Švenčionys, Svintsyan or Święciany Ghetto was a Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Švenčionys (pre-war Second Polish Republic, post-war Lithuanian SSR). It operated from July 1941 to April 1943. At its peak, the g ...

was established. It operated from July 1941 to April 1943. At its peak, the ghetto housed some 1,500 prisoners. The Jewish inhabitants were deported and murdered. On 18 September 1939, Švenčionys was occupied by the Red Army and, on 14 November 1939, incorporated into 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 ...

. The Soviets placed it first in part of Vileyka Oblast of the Belorussian SSR in 1939, then into the

Lithuanian SSR The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (Lithuanian SSR; ; ), also known as Soviet Lithuania or simply Lithuania, was '' de facto'' one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union between 1940–1941 and 1944–1990. After 1946, its terr ...

on 25 November 1940. Švenčionys was occupied by the

German Army The German Army (, 'army') is the land component of the armed forces of Federal Republic of Germany, Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German together with the German Navy, ''Marine'' (G ...

from 27 June 1941 to 7 July 1944 and placed under the administration of the '' Generalbezirk Litauen'' of ''

Reichskommissariat Ostland The (RKO; ) was an Administrative division, administrative entity of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories of Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945. It served as the German Civil authority, civilian occupation regime in Lithuania, La ...

''. In 1942 the Lithuanian Security Police murdered several hundred Poles in the village. Most of the municipal area remained part of the

except the Ashmyany region which was reincorporated into Belarus in 1944.

Demographics

Notable residents

* Yitzhak Arad (1926–2021), Israeli historian, director of

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem (; ) is Israel's official memorial institution to the victims of Holocaust, the Holocaust known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (). It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; echoing the stories of the ...

from 1972 to 1993 *

Mordecai Kaplan Mordecai Menahem Kaplan (June 11, 1881 – November 8, 1983) was an American Conservative rabbi, writer, Jewish educator, professor, theologian, philosopher, activist, and religious leader who founded the Reconstructionist movement of Judaism al ...

(1881–1983), Rabbi and founder of the

Reconstructionist Judaism Reconstructionist Judaism () is a Jewish religious movements, Jewish movement based on the concepts developed by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983)—namely, that Judaism as a Civilization, Judaism is a progressively evolving civilization rather ...

movement * Mark Natanson (1850–1919), Russian revolutionary * Wiktor Thommée (1881–1962), Polish general * Franciszek Żwirko (1895–1932), Polish aviator
Menke Katz
(1906–1991),

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 ...

-language

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

Jacob Samuel Minkin
(1885–1962), American rabbi, hospital chaplain, and expert on Hasidism

References

External links

Official Website
* {{Authority control Cities in Lithuania Cities in Vilnius County Holocaust locations in Poland Municipalities administrative centres of Lithuania Švenčionys District Municipality Sites of World War II massacres of Poles