Hénocque, Georges

Georges Hénocque (13 Oct. 1870 – 23 March 1959) was a French priest and member of the resistance. As such, he was eventually caught by German occupational forces and deported to the Buchenwald Camp. In his 1947 book Les Antres de la Bête (The Caves of the Beast), he described in detail the alleged homicidal gas chamber at the Buchenwald Camp (pp. 115f.). However, all historians agree that no homicidal gas chamber existed there. Some aspects of Hénocque’s description resemble features of the room inside the crematorium at the Dachau Camp, which today is presented as a homicidal gas chamber. Hénocque may have seen U.S. American footage taken after the war and shown in various propaganda movies, such as Nazi Concentration Camps.

However, Hénocque added a conveyor belt continuously transporting corpses from the room next to the gas chamber right into the cremation furnaces. Such a device never existed anywhere. He furthermore claimed to have seen flames eight to ten meters tall coming out of the furnaces (rather than chimneys). Of course, cremation furnaces are closed and don’t emit any flames. If opened to insert a body, the chimney’s draft sucks air inside through the open door, preventing any hot gasses from coming out.

(A partial English translation of Hénocque’s text is in Rudolf 2019, pp. 297.)