OUR WORK
Recovering Lives. Preserving Evidence.
The Gens Family Project brings together archival research, survivor testimony, field documentation, archaeology, film and family history to recover individual lives and preserve the evidence of histories fragmented by war, persecution and displacement.
History Survives in Fragments.
A photograph without a name, a testimony recorded decades after an event, a military file preserved in one country and an immigration record in another. A mass grave hidden in a forest, the foundations of a demolished synagogue beneath a modern city, or a survivor’s memory of a street that no longer looks the same—each preserves part of a history that war, persecution and time scattered across generations and borders.
The work of the Gens Family Project is to bring those fragments together. Through archival research, survivor testimony, field documentation, archaeology, film and family research, we reconnect evidence with the people, places and communities to which it belongs.
At the center of that work is a simple principle:
Evidence matters because people mattered.
The Work of Recovery
Recovering the historical record requires different forms of evidence. Our work brings together archives, physical places, archaeology, memorial sites and family histories to reconstruct lives and preserve what remains.
ARCHIVAL RESEARCH
Following the Evidence
Documents scattered across countries and collections can reconnect names, photographs, places and events that history separated.
FIELD RESEARCH
History in the Landscape.
We document Jewish cemeteries, ghettos, memorials and other historic sites across Lithuania, reconnecting physical places with the people whose histories remain there.
ARCHAEOLOGY
Recovering What History Buried
Working with qualified archaeologists and institutions, archaeological research can reveal evidence that documents alone could never preserve.
MASS GRAVES & MEMORIALS
Places of Murder. Places of Memory.
We document Holocaust killing sites and examine how their victims have been remembered, obscured and restored to historical memory.
DESCENDANT & FAMILY RESEARCH
Reconnecting What History Separated
Through testimony, archives, photographs and family research, we help reconnect histories—and sometimes families—scattered by war, persecution and migration.
History Cannot Preserve Itself.
Every recovered document, identified photograph, documented site and preserved testimony restores another piece of a history fragmented by persecution, war and time. By supporting this work, you help ensure that these lives, places and stories remain part of the historical record.