Viļāni, town (since 1928) in the Rēzekne District (Republic of Latvia). Known since 1495. From 1772, part of the Russian Empire. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the small town of Veleny in the Rezhitsa District of Vitebsk Governorate. From 1918 to 1940, it was part of the Republic of Latvia; from 1940 to 1991 – part of the Latvian SSR.
In 1897, Viļāni had 321 Jewish residents (41.4% of the population); in 1920 – 344 (32%); in 1925 – 391 (28%); and in 1930 – 396 Jews (30%).
Jews had lived in Viļāni since the late 19th century. In 1873, a man named Epstein opened a leather factory employing several hundred workers, including 30–40 Jews. He also built a synagogue in the town. In 1885, Malkiel owned a leather works in Viļāni that supplied soles for the army. From 1900 until the mid-1930s, the town’s rabbi was Tzvi-Hirsh Yemini (1870–?). In the 1920s and 1930s, there were three synagogues in Viļāni. In 1922, a school with Yiddish-language instruction was opened. Local branches of various Jewish political parties and organisations were active. In 1926, Jewish youth prevented a pogrom attempted by a group of Latvian students from Riga. Further antisemitic disturbances occurred in 1928 and 1930.
In the late 1930s, the town’s rabbi was Aharon-Shachne Palchinsky (d. 1941), son-in-law of T.-H. Yemini.
On 2 July 1941, Viļāni was occupied by German forces. On 4 August 1941, 390 Jews were executed near the Jewish cemetery. Later that year, several Roma families were also shot at the same site. Nazi occupation of Viļāni ended on 28 July 1944, when units of the 7th Guards Rifle Division under the command of Major General Mikhail Emmanuilovich Moskalyk (1898–1956) entered the town. After 1945, two memorials were erected at the site of the executions.