Chrystia Freeland — deputy pm / finance with roots in the Austria-Hungary (Galicia)
Chrystia Freeland served as Deputy Prime Minister of Canada from 2019 to 2024 and as Minister of Finance from 2020 to 2024, having previously been Minister of Foreign Affairs. A Rhodes Scholar, she worked as a journalist before entering politics.
"Maternal grandparents left Galicia in 1939; her mother was born in 1946 in a displaced persons camp in Germany; the family emigrated to Canada in 1948"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Eastern Galicia (now Ukraine)
Her maternal grandparents came from Eastern Galicia, then part of Austria-Hungary and later of interwar Poland, and left the region in 1939. Her mother was born in Germany in 1946.
Her mother was born in a displaced persons camp; grandparents fled the Soviets. She speaks fluent Russian/Ukrainian.
Eastern Galicia (now Ukraine). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.