Dieveniškės

Dieveniškės Dziewieniszki
Town
Coat of arms
Dieveniškės Location of Dieveniškės
Coordinates: 54°11′40″N 25°37′30″E
Country	Lithuania
Ethnographic region	Dzūkija
County	Vilnius County
Municipality	Šalčininkai district municipality
Eldership	Dieveniškės eldership
First mentioned	1385
Area
• Total	0.47 km2 (0.18 sq mi)
Population  (2021)
• Total	578
Time zone	UTC+2 (EET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+3 (EEST)

Dieveniškės (in Lithuanian literally: Place of gods; Polish: Dziewieniszki; Belarusian: Дзевянішкі Dzevyanishki) is a town in the Vilnius County of Lithuania, about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) from the Belarusian border in the so-called Dieveniškės appendix. It is surrounded by the Dieveniškės Regional Park.

History

Jewish cemetery of the town.

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 (Lithuanian: Barbora Radvilaitė), 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 people living in the Dieveniškės were ethnically mixed (Lithuanian, Polish, Belarusian), when the region was assigned to Belarus post-1939. Belarus gave the area voluntarily to Lithuania in 1940. As the result, Dieveniškės becomes a 207-square-kilometre Lithuanian salient surrounded by and projecting some 30 kilometres into the Belarusian territory. At its neck, the “Lithuanian appendix” is less than 3 kilometres wide. According to the 1989 census, slightly over 60 percent of residents considered themselves Polish.