Asta Butt was born June 12, 1930 in a small village not too far from Bremen, Germany. Her father had a business transporting goods on the rivers of northern Germany, and her grandfather – a Great War veteran – did the same. Asta went to school , and has largely positive memories from her early life. Things changed of course once the war began, and from that period she recalls the bombing raids and the shortages – and cold – at school. She also remembers the propaganda from the cinemas, and the restrictions that came down on German Jews, impacting a Jewish peddler in her neighbourhood. When the war ended Asta was just fifteen years old, and she returned to school, fortunate not to have experienced much frontline combat in her area. Her village was briefly occupied by British and Canadian troops as they made the transition to a new government and reality. Asta married when she was 18: her husband had been in the German navy and had been a POW in England. The two of them decided to go to Canada, and to try out a new life, which they began in Toronto. Asta’s husband found work as a carpenter, and he was busy as Toronto’s postwar construction boom set in while Asta stayed home and raised their two sons, first in Toronto and later in Richmond Hill. Asta Butt was interviewed at her home in Brighton, Ontario by Scott Masters in September 2024.
