Ada Gens-Ustjanauskas turned 100 on October 9, marking a century that began in a small Lithuanian town, survived the Gestapo's execution of her father, and eventually settled for 65 years in West Hartford, where she and her husband ran an international grocery store and quietly helped thousands of immigrants find their footing in America.
Gens-Ustjanauskas was born in 1926 in Smalininkai, Lithuania, according to an oral history she recorded with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2008. Her father, Jacob Gens, a military officer, became head of the Jewish police in the Vilna ghetto, a role the We-Ha describes as central to the family's wartime ordeal. Ada and her mother lived in a house just outside the ghetto while Jacob lived inside it, the Holocaust museum's collection notes.
Fleeing After Her Father's Execution
The Gestapo executed Jacob Gens in September 1943, and Ada and her mother fled their home soon after. Her grandson, Alexander Phibbs, has said she was given just ten minutes to pack and leave, according to We-Ha's account of the family's history. Fluent in seven languages by 1946, she went on to attend a concert by an ex-concentration camp orchestra at St. Ottilien, Germany, that May, and later attended the Nuremberg trials, per the same outlet's reporting.
After the war, Ada began studying music at the Munich conservatory before immigrating to Australia in 1948, according to the Holocaust museum's oral history. She worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Germany and later the International Refugee Organization, whose headquarters sat in the French zone of occupied Germany, as detailed by CT Insider. Her work took her through Germany, Australia and France, and she became a lieutenant in the French army along the way, We-Ha reports.
Building a Life in West Hartford
Ada married Antanas Ustjanauskas in Australia, and the couple came to the United States in 1953 with her mother, settling in Hartford before making their home on Whiting Lane in West Hartford for 65 years, according to CT Insider. There, the couple operated Cosmos, an international grocery store and parcel agency on Farmington Avenue that stocked Indian, Middle Eastern and European goods, a business the Hartford Courant reports closed in 2022 after 65 years.
Above the store, Ada established an immigration office where she helped newcomers with paperwork, translations and U.S. immigration procedures, We-Ha notes. In the back of the Cosmos shop, as CT Insider reports, she did that immigration work for free, assisting thousands of immigrants navigating complex American bureaucracy over the decades.
Antanas founded the Hundred Club of Connecticut in 1967, an organization that supports families of police officers, firefighters and correctional officers killed in the line of duty, according to We-Ha. The couple also helped establish the Puerto Rican Youth Basketball Club of Hartford. Antanas died of a heart attack at age 57 in August 1972, and Ada went on to raise their six children alone, per the same outlet's reporting.
A Voice at the White House and in Independence Square
Lithuania declared the restoration of its independence from the Soviet Union in March 1990, and that December, Ada interpreted for President George H.W. Bush as he hosted Vytautas Landsbergis at the White House, according to klaipeda.diena.lt. In February 1992, she interpreted for Vice President Dan Quayle during his visit to Vilnius, translating his message of support in Independence Square as the U.S. Embassy in Lithuania opened, We-Ha reports.
Ada moved to Boca Raton, Florida, during the Covid-19 pandemic, where she has continued helping Ukrainian immigrants in her neighborhood, according to We-Ha. She celebrated her 100th birthday with family and friends in Florida this month, and received birthday messages from Richard Blumenthal, Shari Cantor, Dan Quayle, Dick Durbin and Emanuelis Zingeris, the outlet reports.
Preserving a Complicated Family History
Her grandson, Alexander Phibbs, founded the Gens Family Project in her honor, a nonprofit exploring Lithuanian Jewry, the Holocaust and the lives it affected through archival research, oral histories and documentary films, according to the Courant. The project's documentaries, titled The Commandant's Daughter and Girl From Freedom Avenue, are part of Phibbs's effort to share his grandmother's story and raise broader awareness of Lithuanian Jewish history, We-Ha notes.
Phibbs has described his grandfather's wartime role as complicated, telling the Courant in an earlier piece that Jacob Gens did his best even when he knew it was not enough. That framing sits alongside the family's decades of documented public service, from refugee resettlement work in postwar Europe to free immigration help dispensed quietly from behind a Farmington Avenue grocery counter.
