Bloody floor in Sachsenhausen.

F.N. · Post by **F.N.** » 04 Feb 2004 23:37

When I visited Sachsenhausen in september I saw a basement under the camp "hospital", in this basement they used to keep the corpses before cremating them. I looked at the floor and I saw blood. Now what I'm wondering is how there can still be blood on the floor after all these years, do they do something to preserve it? Has anyone else seen this? If you ever visit Sachsenhausen I reccomend you look for this.

-regards

F.N. · Post by **F.N.** » 07 Feb 2004 22:27

Oh, come on. Doesn't anybody know anything about this?
79 views and not one reply...

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 07 Feb 2004 23:29

F.N. -- You said:

I looked at the floor and I saw blood. Now what I'm wondering is how there can still be blood on the floor after all these years, do they do something to preserve it?

How do you know that what you saw was blood?

F.N. · Post by **F.N.** » 08 Feb 2004 00:39

It was red and the "track" led to a drain, witch means it had to be something that would be in a liquid form. Also since it was a room where they used to keep corpses I am presuming that it was blood.

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 08 Feb 2004 00:42

Sixty year old blood stains that are still red?

F.N. · Post by **F.N.** » 08 Feb 2004 00:47

It was brownish red and it wasn't easy to notice, it was not all red.
I wish I had some pictures of it.

Cammin1 · Post by **Cammin1** » 08 Feb 2004 01:56

Ruddy Brown primer/paint maybe? For metal?

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 08 Feb 2004 03:53

This sounds like the effect left on the basement floor by 60+ years of water running through rusty pipes. I can see the same traces on the concrete basement floor of my 45-year old house.

xcalibur · Post by **xcalibur** » 08 Feb 2004 04:47

F.N. wrote:When I visited Sachsenhausen in september I saw a basement under the camp "hospital", in this basement they used to keep the corpses before cremating them. I looked at the floor and I saw blood. Now what I'm wondering is how there can still be blood on the floor after all these years, do they do something to preserve it? Has anyone else seen this? If you ever visit Sachsenhausen I reccomend you look for this.

-regards

Hmm. I should think not. Or rather, "we" don't think so. I've consulted with a number (4) of colleagues (All forensic pathologists, though none of us is a serology specialist).

Based on the assumption that the basement floor in question is concrete:

A) Bloodstains on concrete are generally not so much "staining" of the actual material (as the aggregates that compose it are mostly non-absorbant once cured) but rather appear as a function of the blood filling very small voids between the aggregates that compose concrete.This is very much different from the staining that occurs in absorbant fiber materials such as fabric or wood, whose fibral composition will absorb a stain.

B) One of the best solvents for a pool of blood is cold water. I'm sure you've seen on TV folks spluging bleach around to try and get rid of cime scene blood. Bad idea. Bleach just turns blood into a greenish/ brownish mess.

It would seem that that area would have been washed with some degree of regularity, if only to try to prevent the attraction of pests, chief among them, flies. We know that the Germans had a problem with the spread of disease in the concentration camps so it certainly would have behooved them to remove a problem such as this on a regular basis. IIRC, the Soviets took ove this camp after the war. What purpose did this particular room serve them, if any...

Also, this being a cellar floor, the migration of water vapor from the ground through the floor over time should probably have loosened any remnants of spilt blood..

C) The likely conclusion. What we have arrived at is that the stain was caused by water vapor leaching from the ground, rusting the iron reinforcing bars in the concrete and making it's way to the surface and staining that surface on it's way to the drain. One colleague also suggested that a possible source of the stain was a small leak in a ferrous metal pipe in the ceiling. The obvious conclusion being that the water carried minute particles of rust across the floor surface for a period of time.

D) We don't know. Without scientific testing there's no way to tell for sure. And even then, given the nature of human blood and the technology available it's questionable, ie, in the sense of testing or the presence of blood. A better way to approach it would be to test for other materials having left the stain and eliminate those as necessary. Again, it seems extremely unlikely that what you have seen is blood or the residue thereof.

Georg_S · Post by **Georg_S** » 08 Feb 2004 08:52

Hallo

Can´t it be like what I have read about fieldhospitals, who coloroured the floor red because they didn´t want all the soldiers to see all of the blood.
And my self think it´s impossible for blood to stay as for 60 years.
Blood is organic, and vanish after some time.

Best reg.

Georg

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Bloody floor in Sachsenhausen.

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