Student Profile: T. Bukiet

Tadeusz Bukiet was born May 23, 1927 in Lodz, Poland. He was 13 years old when his family was forced into the Lodz ghetto. In the ghettto, he lived at Goering Strasse 93 and Hohensteiner Strasse 9 Flat 16. It is likely that Tadeusz was in the ghetto until its liquidation in August 1944 when the remaining ghetto inhabitants were deported to Auschwitz. According to secondary sources, a transport of almost 1,000 Jews from the Lodz ghetto arrived via Auschwitz at the Neuengamme sub camp of Hannover-Stocken on September 7, 1944. It is likely that Tadeusz was on that transport. German authorities deployed prisoners from this transport at forced labor in the Continental Rubber Works factory there. In October 1944, the SS sent 80-85% of the prisoners to the Neuengamme main camp as "unfit to work." By the end of November, at least 50 of them had died. On November 30, the management of the Continental Rubber Works transplanted the factory to the mine tunnels at Hannover-Ahlem, and the SS moved the surviving prisoners there. Conditions in the tunnels at Ahlem were particularly bad, and prisoner mortality soared. Tadeusz died in Ahlem on February 19, 1945.