By Jim Tuttle
Smithfield Times Staff Writer
A Carrollton man who helped fight the Nazis as a member of the Dutch underground resistance turned 88 this year.
Born in the Netherlands in 1921, Stephanus “Steve” Beunis was 19 when Germany invaded his country in May of 1940. Today, he describes his decision to join the resistance effort as “automatic.”
“You protect your country. We hadn’t done anything, and they just walked in there and took all our food and everything,” he said.
“We did as much damage as we could.”
“We were one of the best equipped in our diocese, and they took it all,” Beunis said.
It became illegal to participate in any scouting organization other than “Youth Storm” a Dutch program similar to the Hitler Youth.
Beunis declined to discuss some of the specific methods he employed during the war, but summarized the majority of his work with the underground as “disabling vehicles.”
His acts of sabotage included slashing tires and emptying a tanker truck’s payload of fuel onto the ground.
“We opened the valve and took off,” Beunis said, describing an incident that took place early in the war.
“Gasoline was gold for the Germans.”
Without much in the way of weapons, members of the underground had to get creative to disrupt the Nazis in any way they could, he said.
“Kids from 14, 15-years old would find German cars or trucks with nobody around and pee in the gas tank. You get three or four kids peeing in the gas tank, man, it’ll really mess you up.”
Over the course of the war, Beunis dedicated himself to the underground, working in eastern and southern Holland. In addition to acts of sabotage, he also risked his life by providing shelter in his home to Jews, Gypsies and other wanted people.
He compared the system to the Underground Railroad in the United States during the Civil War.
Three people were allowed to stay in his house at any given time. They were given food and had to stay indoors with the blinds tightly drawn at night.
“You didn’t want more than three at a time. It was too dangerous,” Beunis said.
In 1943 a concentration camp, Herzoganbusch, was built in Vught, and Beunis became a firsthand witness to the workings of the Holocaust.
“All the Jews from south Netherlands to middle Netherlands had to come and they put them in the camp there,” he said.
He lived within sight of a train station that was used by the Nazis to move people from Vught to other camps for extermination.
Read the rest of Beaunis' story in the November 11 issue of the Smithfield Times. Papers can be purchased at newstands, or subscribe by calling 357-3288 or online at www.smithfieldtimes.com
