Dieveniskes

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 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. In April 1940 occupying Soviet authorities started deporting the town's residents to Siberia. 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 captured Dieveniškės several times and harassed the local Lithuanian population. According to local legend, Stalin's smoking pipe 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 by USSR. 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…

Most-observed species

• Common Chaffinch

  Fringilla coelebs Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  20
• Yellowhammer

  Emberiza citrinella Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  16
• Common Wood-Pigeon

  Columba palumbus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  16
• White Wagtail

  Motacilla alba Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  16
• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  16
• Common Chiffchaff

  Phylloscopus collybita (Vieillot, 1817) · Aves
  15
• Eurasian Skylark

  Alauda arvensis Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  15
• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  14