Hidden amid the needle-leaf conifers of a Siberian forest, sixty captured priests marched at gunpoint. A detachment of soldiers, most likely from the local concentration camp, led the prisoners through the trees towards a freshly dug trench. Nearby, a group of Soviet geologists, who by chance had pitched their tents in the same area, watched them approach until the soldiers warned them to vanish. The soldiers explained that they were going to liquidate the priests—“an element alien to the Soviet system”, one said. Out of sight, the soldiers lined up the priests next to the trench. A gun was pointed…