Sabine’s War: How My Mother Survived the Concentration Camps

An incredible true story of romance, resistance and bravery

Sabine’s War is the previously untold story of a beautiful and remarkable Resistance fighter.

When the Second World War broke out young, vibrant and beautiful Sabine Zuur joined the Dutch resistance movement without a flinch of hesitation. But Sabine was betrayed and subjected to multiple violent interrogations. Many of her friends were executed; she was eventually sent to Mauthausen concentration camp, via Amersfoort and Ravensbrück, enduring grueling conditions and forced labour.

Eva, Sabine’s daughter, discovers an archive after her mother’s death containing love letters from pilot Taro, who crashed in his Spitfire, and from Sabine’s second love Gerard, who was executed by the Germans. She finds tiny notes from Sabine, which she secretly smuggled to her mother from prison in her laundry. And she comes across a pile of passionate, but also terrifying love letters from a man called Gebele, a German professional criminal who would save her mother’s life in Mauthausen. Using all these documents, Eva reconstructed the heart-rending story of Sabine’s war.