News articles covering the Merkaz Harav attack last week are reporting that some of the murdered students were buried with their gemara. Since the gemara was soaked in blood, it had to be buried anyway.
how is that done? i thought holy books (and all sheimos) had to be buried separately? or is that just a myth?

There was an old minhag (Ashkenaz?) to bury shemos with talmidei chachomim.

I'd guess they buried them with the gemaros precisely because it was soaked with their blood. The point is burying them with as much of their blood as could be recovered. (afaik anyway)

Is it just me, or does that practice (going to extreme lengths to recover blood that soaked objects like paper) seem weird, as opposed to especially respectful?

It's not just you.

My friend Z'l was niftar with a sefer in his hand and they put it ( and all his clothing) in some sort of bag and buried it with him.

I was wondering about this practice myself since as a woman I'm tossing out a lot of my own blood and I'm not burying it.

So it's not that I think it's weird, but illogical/inconsistent.

There's a difference between before one is dead and after.

While I have no desire to participate in this series of threads...
Where's that picture from the Chafetz Chaim's levayah that was previously posted on h.com, the one with the seforim on the bier?

The person who's being buried is dead but how do you know (without an autopsy, especially) that the blood didn't come out of him when he was still alive? How long before a person died is the blood considered separate?

[with acknowledgment to mosheshmeal who posted the picture on h.com originally]

Not to mention that in halachah there's supposed to be a difference between menstrual blood and regular blood. Besides, if you think about the logistics...

See this. (Look at the bottom right corner.)

What an interesting book. But it only says what is supposed to done, not why.