The town received its coat of arms in 1567, and in 1569, the king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania, Sigismund II Augustus, granted Dzisna Magdeburg city rights.

In the days following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, about half of the Jewish population fled to the east.

[2] The first Aktion took place on 28 March 1942, when 30 Jews were shot in what was reportedly a reprisal for the death of the son of the Gebietskommissar.

[8] On the night of 14–15 June, a small Sicherheitspolizei squad, with the help of reinforcements, surrounded the ghetto in Dzisna, which had 2,181 inhabitants according to German records.

[8] As they entered the ghetto, some of the Jews resisted, with a few hundred able to flee to the forest, although many were later found by police or turned in.