EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
Classroom Materials
Teaching History Through Evidence.
Our classroom materials bring students into direct contact with survivor testimony, photographs, documents, maps and historical research. Designed to support inquiry rather than simply provide answers, these resources help students examine how history is reconstructed, interpreted and preserved.
Materials draw from the Gens Family Project’s research into Lithuanian Jewish history, the Holocaust, occupation and displacement, connecting larger historical events to the individual lives of the people who experienced them.
EXPLORE THE MATERIALS →
CLASSROOM RESOURCES
Built Around Primary Evidence.
Each resource is designed to help students examine historical evidence, ask questions and connect individual lives to the larger events surrounding them.
SURVIVOR TESTIMONY
History in the First Person
Excerpts from recorded testimony allow students to encounter events through the memories of those who experienced them and consider both the value and complexity of eyewitness evidence.
DOCUMENTS & PHOTOGRAPHS
Reading the Historical Record
Original documents and photographs invite students to identify details, compare sources and consider what surviving evidence can—and cannot—tell us about the past.
MAPS & PLACE
Understanding Where History Happened
Historical and contemporary maps help students connect events to real streets, communities, ghettos, killing sites and landscapes.
GUIDED QUESTIONS
From Evidence to Inquiry
Discussion prompts encourage students to compare sources, recognize uncertainty and develop interpretations supported by evidence.
FOR THE CLASSROOM
Designed for Different Ways of Teaching.
The materials are intended to support a range of classroom settings, from individual lessons to longer units built around testimony, documents, film and historical inquiry. Teachers can use individual sources on their own or combine them to create a broader study of a person, place or event.
Resources can be adapted for different age groups and levels of prior knowledge. Younger students may begin with photographs, maps and guided observation, while older students can work more deeply with testimony, conflicting sources, historical context and questions of interpretation.
The emphasis throughout is on evidence-based learning. Students are encouraged to ask what a source shows, who created it, what may be missing and how it connects to other surviving records.
Rather than presenting history as a fixed set of conclusions, the materials help students understand how historical knowledge is built—and why careful interpretation matters.
HISTORICAL THEMES
Connecting Individual Lives to Larger History.
The classroom materials use individual stories and primary sources to help students explore the wider historical forces that shaped twentieth-century Lithuania and its Jewish communities.
JEWISH LITHUANIA
A World Before the Holocaust
Explore the religious, cultural, political and everyday life of Lithuanian Jews before the destruction of their communities.
SOVIET OCCUPATION
The Loss of Independence
Examine how occupation, repression and deportation transformed Lithuanian society beginning in 1940.
THE HOLOCAUST
Persecution and Mass Murder
Study how Nazi occupation led rapidly to ghettos, mass shootings and the destruction of Jewish communities across Lithuania.
THE VILNA GHETTO
Life, Leadership and Resistance
Use testimony and documents to examine daily life, cultural survival, resistance and the difficult choices made under German rule.
DISPLACEMENT & EXILE
What Happened After Survival
Follow survivors through hiding, escape, displaced-persons camps, migration and the challenge of rebuilding lives after the war.
RESTORED INDEPENDENCE
The Return of a Free Lithuania
Connect the experiences of one generation with Lithuania’s struggle to restore independence decades later.
WORKING WITH PRIMARY SOURCES
Learning to Ask Better Questions.
Primary sources bring students close to the past, but they also require careful interpretation. A photograph, testimony, government document or letter reflects the circumstances in which it was created and the perspective of the person or institution behind it.
Students are encouraged to ask who created a source, when and why it was produced, who its intended audience was and what information may be missing. These questions help distinguish evidence from assumption and make students more attentive to context.
Different sources may also disagree. Testimony can conflict with official records, dates may vary and photographs may survive without complete identification. Rather than treating those differences as problems to be ignored, the materials use them to show how historical interpretation actually works.
By comparing sources and looking for corroboration, students learn to build conclusions from evidence while recognizing where uncertainty remains. That process is central not only to studying history, but to understanding how reliable knowledge is formed.
FILM IN THE CLASSROOM
Turning Viewing Into Historical Inquiry.
Documentary film can bring testimony, photographs, archival footage and historical places together in ways that allow students to encounter several forms of evidence at once. But viewing is only the beginning of the learning process.
Our classroom materials encourage students to examine what they see and hear on screen: whose voice is speaking, where an image came from, how testimony relates to other evidence and why particular sources were chosen to tell the story.
Discussion questions and supporting materials help teachers place each film within its historical context while encouraging students to distinguish between testimony, archival evidence, interpretation and narration.
Used this way, film becomes more than an illustration of history. It becomes another source students can question, compare and investigate.
FOR EDUCATORS
Bring the Evidence Into the Classroom.
These materials are designed to help teachers introduce complex history through individual lives and surviving evidence. They can support classroom discussion, independent research, film screenings and broader units on the Holocaust, Lithuanian history, displacement and historical memory.
The Gens Family Project can also work with educators and institutions interested in using the materials in a particular course, age group or program.
For museums, universities, schools, Jewish communities and cultural institutions interested in hosting a screening or presentation, please contact the Gens Family Project.