ADA GENS-USTJANAUSKAS
A Life Across a Century of Lithuanian History.
Born in independent Lithuania in 1926, Ada Gens-Ustjanauskas lived through Soviet and German occupation, the Holocaust, displacement and exile—and decades later witnessed the restoration of the country her family had once fought to build.
HER STORY
Between Two Worlds.
Ada grew up in Kaunas in a family that reflected two traditions within Lithuania. Her father, Jacob Gens, was Jewish; her mother, Elvyra Budreikaitė, was Roman Catholic. Their daughter moved naturally between both worlds, surrounded by family, education, music and a deep attachment to the country in which she was raised.
Her childhood unfolded during the years of independent Lithuania. But beginning in 1940, the political world around her changed with extraordinary speed. Soviet occupation was followed by the German invasion, the destruction of Lithuania’s Jewish communities and the murder of much of Ada’s family.
Her survival would depend on secrecy, courage, relationships and decisions made in circumstances no teenager should have been forced to confront.
BEFORE THE OCCUPATIONS
A Childhood on Freedom Avenue.
Ada spent her childhood in Kaunas, then the temporary capital of an independent Lithuania. The city was growing rapidly, and Laisvės alėja—Freedom Avenue—became one of the centers of its social and cultural life.
Her father, Jacob Gens, had fought for Lithuanian independence as a teenager and later served as an officer in the Lithuanian Army. Her mother, Elvyra, came from a Lithuanian Catholic family. Their home brought together different traditions within the young republic.
Ada attended excellent schools, was close friends with children from prominent Lithuanian families, and grew up surrounded by language, music, friendships and family. To her, the worlds of Jewish and Catholic Lithuania were not separate abstractions. They were simply the world she knew.
That world would begin to disappear in 1940.
1940–1941
The First Occupation.
In June 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania. Ada was thirteen years old. The institutions of the independent republic were dismantled, property was nationalized, arrests began and thousands of people were eventually deported from the country.
For Ada, the transformation was immediate and personal. Her father was removed from his position, family bank accounts were frozen, and classmates disappeared as families were arrested or deported. The independent Lithuania in which she had grown up was being dismantled before her eyes.
Then, in June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded Soviet-occupied Lithuania. Another regime arrived, but for Ada and her family the danger became far greater. Her father was Jewish, and the persecution and destruction of Lithuania’s Jewish population began almost immediately.
1941–1943
Between the Ghetto and the Outside World.
After the German occupation, the Jewish population of Vilna was forced into ghettos. Ada’s father, Jacob Gens, became Chief of the Jewish Police and later one of the central figures in the administration of the Vilna Ghetto, operating under conditions in which nearly every decision carried consequences for human life.
Ada and her mother, Elvyra, remained outside the ghetto under assumed identities, but Ada repeatedly crossed into it. She carried messages, worked on assignments connected to the ghetto and moved between two worlds that were becoming increasingly dangerous to cross. She understood that discovery could mean death and carried a cyanide pill with her.
Inside the ghetto, hunger, forced labor and deportations shaped daily life. Beyond its walls, thousands of Vilna’s Jews were being murdered at Ponary. Yet cultural life continued: theater, music, schools and other institutions became ways of preserving dignity and community in the midst of destruction.
For Ada, the ghetto was not an abstract historical place. Her father, relatives, friends and much of the Jewish world she had known were inside it.
SEPTEMBER 1943
The World Around Her Collapses.
On September 14, 1943, Jacob Gens was summoned by the Gestapo. He did not return. He was executed that day, accused of maintaining connections with the underground and aiding resistance within the ghetto.
Ada was warned that she and her mother were now in immediate danger. German authorities searched their apartment, and the identities that had allowed them to remain outside the ghetto could no longer protect them.
Only days later, the Vilna Ghetto was liquidated. Its remaining inhabitants were deported to camps, forced-labor sites or murdered. Ada would never see many of the relatives, friends and familiar faces of that world again.
At sixteen years old, she had lost her father and much of the family and community that had surrounded her. Now she and Elvyra had to disappear.
1943–1944
Survival in Hiding.
After Jacob’s execution, Ada and Elvyra fled toward the Šiauliai region, where they were taken in by the Venclauskas family. For the remainder of the German occupation, they lived in concealment while the world they had known continued to disappear around them.
The Venclauskas family had already chosen to help people targeted by the occupation. Their home became a place of refuge, and members of the family were later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations for helping save Jews during the Holocaust.
For Ada and Elvyra, survival depended on remaining unseen, trusting the people around them and enduring the uncertainty of whether each day would bring discovery. By the time the German occupation ended, much of their extended family had been murdered and Jewish Lithuania had been devastated.
They had survived the Nazis. But the return of Soviet rule meant that safety still did not mean freedom.
1944–1946
Surviving the War Was Not the End.
When Soviet forces returned to Lithuania in 1944, Ada and Elvyra emerged from hiding, but the country they returned to was no longer free. Soviet rule had returned, and those with connections to independent Lithuania, the West or wartime resistance could again become targets.
In 1945, Ada and Elvyra escaped west through Poland and into Germany. Their journey carried them across a devastated continent, eventually bringing them to the displaced-person community at St. Ottilien.
There, among survivors rebuilding lives after the camps, Ada encountered another extraordinary chapter of postwar Jewish history. She became connected with the Ex-Concentration Camp Orchestra and, in May 1946, attended both one of its concerts and the Nuremberg Trials.
To survive the Nazis, they had been forced into concealment. Under Soviet rule, survival required a different kind of caution: hiding in plain sight.
1946–1953
Building a Life After Europe.
The end of the war did not mean an immediate return to normal life. Like millions of displaced Europeans, Ada had to build a future far from the country in which she had grown up.
In Germany, she worked with the international organizations responsible for assisting refugees and displaced persons, including UNRRA and the International Refugee Organization. Her language skills and familiarity with different cultures became tools for helping others navigate the uncertain postwar world.
Ada later emigrated to Australia before eventually coming to the United States. In 1953, she and her family settled in Hartford, Connecticut, beginning another chapter of a life that had already crossed borders, occupations and continents.
She had left Lithuania as a survivor. In America, she would become an interpreter, public servant and advocate whose life remained closely tied to the country she had been forced to leave behind.
1953–1990
A Life Between America and Lithuania.
After settling in Connecticut in 1953, Ada built a life in the United States while remaining deeply connected to Lithuania and to the communities displaced by war and Soviet occupation.
Her command of languages led to decades of work as an interpreter and public servant. She worked with U.S. immigration authorities, interpreted in investigations involving alleged Nazi war criminals, and later served as an interpreter in work connected to the U.S. government and Lithuania.
Outside government service, Ada remained active in Lithuanian-American civic life. She and her husband, Antanas Ustjanauskas, founded the Hundred Club of Connecticut in 1967, and for decades she helped maintain connections between families separated by the Iron Curtain.
The country of her childhood remained under Soviet rule, but Lithuania never disappeared from her life. By the end of the 1980s, the possibility that had once seemed impossible—a free Lithuania—was returning.
1990–1992
A Free Lithuania Returns.
In March 1990, Lithuania declared the restoration of its independence from the Soviet Union. For Ada, the political struggle unfolding thousands of miles away was inseparable from the country of her childhood and from the family she had lost.
In December 1990, she interpreted during Lithuanian leader Vytautas Landsbergis’s visit to the White House, where he met with President George H. W. Bush as Lithuania sought American support in its struggle to secure independence from Soviet rule.
Two years later, Ada returned to Lithuania as an interpreter during Vice President Dan Quayle’s visit to Vilnius. In February 1992, she stood with him as the United States formally marked a new relationship with an independent Lithuania and delivered words of support to a country emerging from decades of occupation.
Ada’s father had fought for Lithuanian independence as a teenager. He did not live to see that independence restored. His daughter did—and helped give voice to it.
1992–PRESENT
A Witness Across Generations.
For decades, Ada carried memories that connected several worlds: independent Lithuania before the war, Soviet and German occupation, the destruction of Jewish Vilna, postwar displacement and, finally, the restoration of Lithuanian independence.
In 2008, she recorded an extensive oral-history interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her testimony preserves not only what she witnessed, but the people who inhabited that history—her parents, relatives, friends and the communities whose lives were shattered by the war.
Today, Ada’s memories form one of the central foundations of the Gens Family Project. Her testimony has guided archival research, documentary films and the effort to recover stories that remained scattered or untold for generations.
Nearly a century after her childhood in Lithuania, her voice continues to connect the history that was lost with the generations now working to preserve it.
HER STORY ON FILM
Hear Ada Tell the Story Herself.
Ada’s testimony is at the heart of two Gens Family Project documentaries, preserving her memories of prewar Lithuania, the Holocaust, survival, displacement and the extraordinary life that followed.