In this clip, Chris describes how her older brother was murdered by the Nazis.

CD: My father and mother’s first child was born somewhat mentally challenged. He had seizures and, essentially, the health authorities at that time in areas under Nazi occupation—or in in Germany itself and Nazi Germany—within the Third Reich—were told that they had to report people with disabilities. When he was three years old, my parents were told to bring their son to a state hospital. My father had some contacts in the resistance groups to Hitler and was able to find out what actually happened at these state hospitals. So they didn’t follow the instructions. And, one day, when my parents were away and my sister at school and just the mother’s help girl was at home with the—the boy, the Health Department simply came and took him away. And he was dead a few months later. Before that, they may or may not have done medical experiments. My mother was upset when she went to visit him once—that his hands were badly shrunken from being in water. So, who knows what that was about? At any rate, he was then murdered as part of the—what the Nazi’s called euthanasia, although, of course, it was not euthanasia in any way. It was a desire on the part of the Nazis to build a superior super race. And this little boy was just not considered superior enough. Although, according to the Nazis—their definition—my parents—both my parents—were what they called Aryans. So it wasn’t a racial thing. It was that fact that he was not considered superior enough to be part of the super race. So he died soon after he was at the hospital for a few months and I guess I was the replacement baby. Yeah. So he was killed in ’43 and I was born in ’44.

Christiana (Chris) Duschinsky was born in 1944 in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). Her father was imprisoned during the Second World War but was released in 1944. In April 1945, Chris and her family fled from Danzig to a refugee camp in Denmark. Sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee, the family immigrated to Canada on board RMS Empress of Canada , arriving at Pier 21 on April 1 1948. The family settled in Saskatchewan and lived in small Prairie towns, later moving to Kelowna, BC. Chris later studied history at UBC, where she met her husband Peter Duschinsky. In the 1970s, Peter got a job with the Canadian Foreign Service as an immigration officer. The job took Chris and her family across the world, with postings in Paris, Chicago, Cairo, and Budapest. They settled in Ottawa after returning to Canada. They have three grown children, and grandchildren.

Video oral history interview conducted by Emily Burton on 1 December 2015 at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. This interview is unrestricted; please contact Museum staff for access to full interview.

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