A Holocaust Survivor’s Story Comes to the Silver Screen

Sabina Wurmbrand exchanged injustice and resentment for a thriving life of forgiveness! John Grooter’s upcoming film, Sabina: Tortured for Christ, the Nazi years - is the prequel to his earlier movie about Richard Wurmbrand, whom she marries. 

John Grooters: “I think Sabina is – just flat out one of the most important and influential women of the 20th century. She was at Sorbonne University. She’s studying physics! She is talented and smart. At the same time, what God does with her, is bring about greatness through humility. She is a strong, strong woman in her own right and in many, many ways Richard is the beneficiary of her strength.”

Question: "What surprised you in what you learned?”

John Grooters: “Hmmm! Well, you’re not going to find a bigger story arch than the Sabina Oster that you’ll meet in this movie ‘Sabina’-- to the Sabina Wurmbrand. She started like all of us – selfish! They’re atheists! They’re hedonists! In fact, Sabina is militantly opposed to Christianity in any form!” 

From a Jewish family in Romania, Sabina eventually joins Richard in discovering a faith that brought purpose to both of their imprisonments and their underground ministry during Communist occupation. 

Question: “What is it about her enduring circumstances that stands out the most?”

John Grooters: “Hmm! Richard comes to Christ first! He explores the gospel and he comes to the conclusion: a universe with no creator just can’t compare to the thought of a God who speaks and listens! But she’s not ready for that. So Richard shares his journey with her even to the point where he says I’m going to be baptized today. A huge step for him and that same day, she takes a blade and contemplates suicide so that when he comes home he’ll find her lifeless body and that’ll show him! And then she says –‘I had a thought, what if he’s right!’”

Sabina’s parents, two sisters, brother, and uncles later become victims of Nazi concentration camps.

Question: “What will resonate about her life?”

John Grooters: “We would benefit from meeting anybody who was able to face the enemy with love! She even meets the specific executioner that murdered her entire family and got away with it! She chooses to fight back with love and forgiveness. She says, ‘I couldn’t do these things but Christ in me can do all things!’ There was victory in Christ through the suffering.”      

Question: “We’re living in a lot of uncertainty right now. It tends to bring a lot of honesty! (John: “yeah!”) Are we short on that in our western world?”

John Grooters: “This isn’t in the movie but they prayed that God would give them a cross to bear, recognizing that if Christ says ‘if you share in my sufferings, you’ll share when I arise.' And man did they get one! It came and it came heavy! They were brutally treated in prison and yet they continued to pray for their jailers. And its very inspiring and I started to say, ‘who are these people, right?'"

Question “What spoke to you personally?”

John Grooters: “Sabina and Richard in this movie, there’s a moment, they’re driving in their car, they’re approaching a checkpoint and all of a sudden they realize these are Nazi’s and they’re checking passports! He says, ‘I’ll be thrown in prison, I’ll be tortured, it’ll be the end of out life together.’ She opens her bible and she reads, ‘whoever would save his life would lose it. And whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it!’ And she turns to him and says, ‘we believe this or we don’t.’ And they drive straight into that checkpoint. And their story, we’re still talking about them in 2021 as they didn’t run away and didn’t try to preserve their life. They lost it for the sake of Christ.”

Question: “John, the margin between one’s reality of persecution and torture and another’s view of it sitting comfortably in a soft theatre seat. Is that margin narrowing with greater empathy?”

John Grooters: “Ah Tom, that’s a great question! There was a real cost that they paid that up until now, my wife and I have not paid. We have been spared the kind of persecution that our brothers and sisters around the world right now are not being spared! And they’re sitting in prisons in communist China. And they’re sitting unknown in North Korea. And they’re being hunted in places like Africa and the Middle East. And as you at least listen to their stories, you have the chance to unite with them and to pray for them.”