Van Thyn was born in Amsterdam in 1921.[3] She originally attended Free University of Amsterdam, until she had to quit and start working in a factory.[3] She and her family were Jewish.[4] In 1942, when the Nazis occupied Amsterdam, her sister and brother-in-law were taken by German soldiers and then her father and first husband.[5] Finally, Van Thyn and her mother were taken to Auschwitz, where Van Thyn was assigned inmate number 62511.[3][6] They were placed on railroad cattle cars with nearly one hundred other people for three days[4] with the men separated from the women.[7] At Auschwitz, she underwent medical experiments, all performed without sedatives.[8][9] She was one of two medical-experiment victims of Carl Clauberg's sterilization experiment who was interviewed in 2005 about the program.[10] She lived in Block 10 of Auschwitz for two years.[11] Later she was dispatched to Ravensbrueck and survived a "death march" at the end of the war.[12] She was liberated by American soldiers[13] on April 26, 1945.[3]
Upon liberation Van Thyn discovered that both parents, a sister, and her husband, Mozes Lezer, were killed in the death camps.[9] After she returned to the Netherlands, she met fellow survivor Louis Van Thyn, whose first wife was murdered in the Holocaust.[5] Rose and Louis married in Amsterdam in 1946. The Van Thyns had a son and a daughter.[13] The Van Thyns' 1956 immigration to the United States was sponsored by the Shreveport Jewish Federation and the family of Abe Gilbert.[2] Van Thyn became a United States citizen in 1961.[3]
In 2002, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at Centenary's 2002 commencement exercises.[17] In 2003, Louis and Rose Van Thyn were recognized for their civic support by the National Conference for Community and Justice, formerly known as the National Conference of Christians and Jews.[18] She also received the Liberty Bell Award from the Shreveport Bar Association.[13]
In 2008, her husband, Louis, died.[19] Van Thyn died on June 27, 2010, at age 88.[2] Shreveport mayor Cedric Glover expressed sorrow on Van Thyn's death: "It is a tremendous loss not just to Shreveport but to the entire world to know that someone who possessed the knowledge and experience and the history that she lived has now passed on."[20]
In 2016, her son, Nico Van Thyn, released an independently published book about his parents' experience, titled Survivors: 62511, 70726: Two Holocaust stories, from Amsterdam to Auschwitz to America.[6]
^ abHeyen, Curtis; Jordan, Carita (18 April 2001). "Holocaust Memories Do Not Fade". The Times. Shreveport. Retrieved 14 August 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
