DOCUMENTARY FILM
The Girl from Freedom Avenue
A Childhood Interrupted by History.
Born in 1926 and raised along Kaunas’s Laisvės alėja—Freedom Avenue—Ada Gens-Ustjanauskas grew up in the world of independent Lithuania. Within a few years, that world was shattered by Soviet occupation, Nazi persecution and war. Told through Ada’s own testimony, family photographs and archival evidence, the film follows her extraordinary journey from childhood in Kaunas through survival, displacement and, decades later, the return of a free Lithuania.
THE STORY
History Through Ada’s Eyes.
The Girl from Freedom Avenue is built around the testimony of Ada Gens-Ustjanauskas, whose life crossed nearly every major rupture in twentieth-century Lithuanian history. She was born into an independent country, grew up in Kaunas, lived through Soviet occupation, Nazi persecution and the Holocaust, escaped west after the war, and decades later witnessed Lithuania reclaim its independence.
Her story offers something broader than a personal memoir. Through one life, the film follows the destruction of a world, the choices families were forced to make under occupation, and the long consequences of war and displacement.
Ada also occupies an unusual historical position. As the daughter of Jacob Gens, she stood close to one of the most consequential and debated figures in the history of the Vilna Ghetto, while at the same time experiencing the war as a young woman moving between different worlds of danger, concealment and survival.
The film brings her memories together with archival footage, family photographs, documents and historical research, allowing the audience to encounter both the events themselves and the human life moving through them.
THE WORLD BEFORE
Freedom Avenue Before Everything Changed.
The film opens in interwar Kaunas, where Ada grew up along Laisvės alėja—Freedom Avenue—during the years of Lithuanian independence. Through family photographs, archival film and her own memories, she recalls a childhood shaped by school, music, friendships and the life of a confident young country.
That world provides the emotional foundation of the film. What follows is not simply a chronology of occupation and war, but the destruction of the world Ada believed would always exist.
In 1940, the Soviet occupation begins. A year later, Nazi Germany invades. From that point forward, the film follows Ada as the boundaries between ordinary life and survival disappear.
AT THE CENTER OF THE FILM
Ada Tells the Story Herself.
The heart of The Girl from Freedom Avenue is Ada’s own voice. Recorded decades after the events she describes, her testimony carries the immediacy of someone recalling the people, places and decisions that shaped her life.
Rather than using narration to replace her memories, the film allows Ada’s testimony to lead whenever possible. Her words are placed alongside family photographs, archival footage, documents and images of the places she remembered, creating a conversation between memory and historical evidence.
That distinction matters. The film is not simply about what happened to Ada—it is built around the way she remembered, understood and chose to tell what happened.
Her testimony gives the history its human scale: not only occupations, borders and governments, but classrooms, friendships, fear, separation, escape and the people she never saw again.
ARCHIVAL EVIDENCE
Reconstructing a World That No Longer Exists.
Much of the world Ada describes was destroyed, transformed or scattered across countries after the war. Reconstructing it on screen requires bringing together evidence that survives in very different forms.
The film combines family photographs with archival footage, government records, maps, newspaper material and other historical documents to place Ada’s memories within the world in which they occurred. Each source helps restore something different: the appearance of a street, the atmosphere of a city, the movement of armies, the bureaucracy of occupation or the faces of people who disappeared.
Whenever possible, the images shown are tied directly to the places, people and events Ada remembers rather than used simply as illustration. Archival material is compared with testimony and historical research so that what appears on screen remains grounded in the surviving record.
Together, these fragments allow the film to do more than describe a vanished world. They allow the audience to see parts of it again.
OCCUPATION & WAR
One Life Between Two Occupations.
The film is structured around the successive occupations that transformed Lithuania during Ada’s youth. In 1940, the Soviet Union occupied the country and dismantled the independent state in which she had grown up. One year later, Nazi Germany invaded, bringing persecution, mass murder and the destruction of Lithuanian Jewish life.
For Ada, these were not separate chapters in a history book. Each occupation changed the rules of daily life, altered who was in danger and forced her family to adapt again and again simply to survive.
When the Soviet army returned in 1944, the German occupation ended, but Lithuania did not regain its independence. Ada and her mother emerged from concealment into a country under Soviet rule once more.
That recurring loss of freedom gives the film one of its central tensions: surviving one regime did not mean returning to the life that existed before it.
THE WAR YEARS
A Family Pulled Into the Holocaust.
As the film moves from Kaunas to wartime Vilnius, Ada’s family story becomes inseparable from the history of the Holocaust. Her father, Jacob Gens, becomes Chief of the Jewish Police and later one of the central figures in the administration of the Vilna Ghetto, while Ada and her mother remain outside its walls and move through an increasingly dangerous city.
Through Ada’s testimony, the film approaches the ghetto from an unusually close perspective. She remembers her father not as a historical figure, but as her father—while the archival record reveals the impossible decisions, conflicts and responsibilities surrounding his position.
Beyond the ghetto, mass murder at Ponary and the destruction of Jewish communities across Lithuania steadily close in around the family. By September 1943, Jacob has been executed by the Gestapo, the Vilna Ghetto is being liquidated, and Ada and her mother are forced to flee.
The film follows what happens when history ceases to be something occurring around a family and begins to consume nearly everyone within it.
SURVIVAL & CHOICE
Survival Depended on Other People.
After Jacob’s execution and the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, Ada and her mother could no longer remain where they were. Their survival depended on leaving Vilnius, concealing who they were and finding people willing to help them when discovery could carry devastating consequences.
The film follows them to the Šiauliai region, where they were sheltered by the Venclauskas family. Their story introduces another essential dimension of the Holocaust: the choices made by individuals who decided whether to turn away, participate, remain silent or help.
Ada’s memories of this period are not presented simply as a story of escape. They reveal the uncertainty of living without knowing whom to trust, how long concealment could last or whether the people around you would still be alive when the war ended.
By the time German occupation ended in Lithuania, Ada and her mother had survived—but much of the family, community and world to which they had belonged was gone.
AFTER THE WAR
Survival Did Not Mean Going Home.
When the German occupation ended, Ada and her mother were alive—but Lithuania was again under Soviet rule, and the world they had known before the war no longer existed.
In 1945, they escaped west through Poland and into Germany, joining the enormous movement of displaced people trying to rebuild their lives after the destruction of Europe. Their journey carried them through refugee routes, temporary shelters and displaced-persons communities before they could begin to imagine a permanent future.
The film follows this transition from wartime survival into another kind of uncertainty: crossing borders, depending on aid organizations, searching for relatives and trying to understand which parts of the past could still be recovered.
For Ada, the end of the war was not a return to normal life. It was the beginning of exile—and of building a new life far from the country in which she had grown up.
EXILE & RETURN
A Life Lived Far From Lithuania—Until Lithuania Returned.
Ada eventually built a new life in the United States, but Lithuania remained a constant presence in her work, family and memory. The country she had known as a child survived for decades only through language, relationships, political commitment and the hope that independence might one day return.
The film follows that long distance between the Lithuania Ada lost and the Lithuania she would live to see restored. By 1990 and 1991, the struggle for independence had returned to the center of European history, bringing Ada’s personal story into contact once again with the history of her country.
Her presence during key moments of restored independence gives the film a rare arc: the child who watched Lithuania lose its freedom lived long enough to help give voice to the leaders of a free Lithuania decades later.
The ending does not erase what was lost. Instead, it places survival, memory and independence within the same lifetime—closing a circle that began on Freedom Avenue.
THE RETURN OF INDEPENDENCE
The Country She Lost as a Child Became Free Again.
Half a century after Soviet occupation ended the independent Lithuania of Ada’s childhood, she found herself witnessing its return from an extraordinary position. The country whose freedom her father had fought for as a young man was once again asserting its right to exist as an independent state.
In December 1990, Ada interpreted during Lithuanian leader Vytautas Landsbergis’s visit to the White House, as Lithuania sought American support while confronting continued Soviet pressure. In February 1992, she returned to Vilnius and interpreted Vice President Dan Quayle’s address celebrating Lithuanian independence.
For the film, these moments provide more than a political conclusion. Jacob Gens did not live to see the country he had fought for become free again. His daughter did—and stood there helping its leaders speak across languages at a moment when Lithuania was returning to the international community.
The film ends where Ada’s childhood began: with Lithuania independent once more. But Freedom Avenue, and the people who once filled Ada’s world, can only be recovered through memory.
THE FILM
A Story Preserved in Ada’s Own Voice.
The Girl from Freedom Avenue brings together testimony, family photographs, archival footage and historical research to preserve one life across nearly a century of Lithuanian history.
The film is being prepared for screenings, educational use and public presentation, with the aim of bringing Ada’s story—and the history surrounding it—to audiences in Lithuania, the United States and beyond.
For museums, universities, schools, Jewish communities and cultural institutions interested in hosting a screening or presentation, please contact the Gens Family Project.