FIELD RESEARCH
Following History Back to the Places Where It Happened.
Documents and testimony can tell us where events occurred. Field research allows us to return to those places, document what survives and connect the historical record to the physical landscape.
RESEARCH IN PLACE
The Landscape Is Part of the Evidence.
Historical events occurred in real streets, buildings, forests, cemeteries and communities. Returning to these places can reveal details that documents alone cannot preserve.
A surviving wall may clarify the boundaries of a ghetto. A road can explain how people were transported. A cemetery, foundation or depression in the landscape may preserve evidence of a community or event that has largely disappeared from public view.
The Gens Family Project combines field observation with archival records, survivor testimony, maps and historical scholarship so that physical places can be understood within the events that unfolded there.
The purpose is not simply to visit historical sites, but to document them carefully and preserve their connection to the people whose lives were shaped by them.
MASS GRAVE DOCUMENTATION
Recording the Places Where Communities Were Destroyed.
Across Lithuania, hundreds of mass-grave sites mark places where Jewish communities were murdered during the Holocaust. Some are clearly memorialized; others survive in forests, fields and the edges of towns, where little in the present landscape reveals what occurred there.
The Gens Family Project has documented more than 90 of approximately 230 known Jewish mass-grave sites across Lithuania. At each location, fieldwork records the condition of the site, memorials and inscriptions, the surrounding landscape and physical features that may help connect the place to archival and historical evidence.
Current observations are compared with wartime documents, maps, testimony and earlier photographs. Changes to roads, boundaries, vegetation and memorial structures can help explain how a site has been preserved, altered or obscured over time.
Documenting these places creates a record of what exists now while strengthening the connection between the individuals named in historical sources and the physical locations where their communities were destroyed.
ERASED LANDSCAPES
When the Site No Longer Tells the Story.
Many historical sites no longer look as they did when the events connected to them occurred. Roads have been rerouted, buildings demolished, cemeteries damaged, memorials relocated and forests or development have changed the surrounding landscape.
In some places, the physical evidence is obvious. In others, very little remains to indicate that a Jewish community, burial ground or killing site once occupied the space. This makes careful comparison between the present landscape and historical records especially important.
Field research can help identify what has changed and what still survives. Old maps, aerial photographs, testimony, archival descriptions and archaeological evidence can be compared with present-day conditions to reconstruct the historical geography of a site.
Documenting these changes is itself part of preservation. A place that has been altered or neglected may still retain historical meaning, even when the visible landscape no longer makes that history immediately recognizable.
ARCHAEOLOGY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
What Survives Beneath the Surface.
Some historical evidence survives not in archives, but within the ground itself. Archaeology can reveal foundations, structures, objects and other physical traces that help reconstruct places altered or destroyed by war and later redevelopment.
The Gens Family Project has both participated in and conducted archaeological work connected to Jewish history in Lithuania, including research at sites where the surviving physical evidence can be compared with maps, photographs, testimony and archival records.
At the former Great Synagogue of Vilna and other sites, archaeology has helped recover traces of buildings and spaces that disappeared from the modern cityscape. These discoveries make it possible to reconnect documentary history with the physical world in which Jewish life once unfolded.
Field archaeology does not replace archival research or testimony. It adds another form of evidence—one capable of revealing what survived even when the structures above ground were erased.
MAPS & HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY
Reconstructing Places That Have Changed.
Historical maps can preserve the shape of places that no longer exist. Street plans, property boundaries, aerial photographs and wartime maps help reconstruct neighborhoods, ghettos, cemeteries and other sites altered by destruction or later development.
Field research allows those records to be tested against the present landscape. Distances can be measured, surviving buildings identified and historical routes followed on the ground, helping clarify how people moved through spaces that have since been transformed.
The Gens Family Project uses maps alongside testimony, photographs and archival records to reconnect historical events with precise locations. A remembered street corner, a former gate or the edge of a burial ground can become understandable again when different forms of evidence are brought together.
Reconstructing historical geography helps restore context to places that might otherwise appear ordinary today, revealing the layers of history still present within the modern landscape.
PEOPLE & PLACE
Returning Individual Lives to the Landscape.
Historical places become more meaningful when they can be connected to the people who actually lived, worked, studied, hid or died there. A house, school, cemetery, street or former workplace can help restore context to a life otherwise preserved only through documents and testimony.
The Gens Family Project revisits locations connected to individuals and families in our research, comparing the present landscape with photographs, addresses, maps and survivor accounts. In some cases, the building survives. In others, only the street, property line or surrounding environment remains.
These visits can clarify details that are difficult to understand from records alone. They also help reconnect descendants to places from which their families were separated by war, occupation and migration.
Field research therefore becomes a way of restoring human scale to history—linking names and memories back to the real places in which those lives unfolded.
PRESERVATION IN THE FIELD
Recording What Exists Now.
Historical places continue to change. Buildings deteriorate, memorials are replaced, vegetation obscures features and development alters landscapes that may already have lost much of their original form.
Field documentation creates a record of present conditions through photography, notes, measurements and comparison with earlier maps and images. Even when a site appears unchanged, documenting it establishes evidence that can become important as the landscape evolves.
The Gens Family Project records sites not only for current research, but for future study. A photograph taken today may later become evidence of a feature that no longer survives, while a documented inscription or boundary can preserve information that might otherwise disappear.
Preservation in the field therefore begins with attention: identifying what remains, recording it carefully and ensuring that the physical traces of history are not lost without a record.
FROM FIELD TO RECORD
Bringing the Evidence Together.
Field research does not end when a site has been documented. What is observed on the ground returns to the larger historical record, where photographs, measurements and notes can be compared with archival documents, testimony, maps and earlier research.
Sometimes a visit confirms what the records suggest. In other cases, the landscape raises new questions—a surviving structure may change the interpretation of a photograph, an unexpected distance may clarify testimony, or a feature visible at the site may lead back to records that had previously seemed unconnected.
The Gens Family Project brings these forms of evidence together so that places are not studied separately from the people and events connected to them. Fieldwork can strengthen archival research, while archival discoveries can determine where the next investigation should begin.
The result is a more complete historical record—one built not from a single source, but from the relationship between documents, memory and the physical places where history unfolded.
CONTINUE THE WORK
See How Field Research Connects Back to the Archive.
Archival records often lead back to the places where history unfolded. Continue into the Gens Family Project’s field research and see how documents, testimony and physical landscapes are brought together.