Syanno

Senno or Syanno (Belarusian: Сянно, Russian: Сенно́) is a city in the Vitebsk Region of Belarus. It is 58 km (36 mi) southwest of Vitebsk on the southern shore of Senno Lake. Its population in 2010 was 8,000.

The village is first mentioned in a document of 1534, although there are indications it already existed in the middle of the 15th century. Fairs were held there, and a lively hay market gave it its name (Russian: сено seno 'hay'). From the first half of the 17th century it belonged to the Sapieha family; from the second half of the 18th century, to the Ogińskis. In 1772 it became part of the Russian Empire.

In 1924, Senno became part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. During World War II, it was the site of a major tank battle in July 1941. On June 22, 1941, Nazi forces rampaged through this part of Belarus. In three years, they wiped out 80 percent of the country’s 980,000 Jews. Mobile death units rounded up entire shtetls, or towns, of Jews, confined them to cramped ghettos, and then marched them off to pits where they were shot dead.