Anne Applebaum

Anne Applebaum has a personal remembrance of Poland, Communism, and the Pope. in today's Washington Post: "My husband, 16 years old at the time, remembers climbing a tree on the outskirts of an airfield near Gniezno where the pope was saying Mass and seeing an endless crowd, 'three kilometers in every direction.' The regime -- its leaders, its police -- were nowhere visible: 'There were so many of us, and so few of them.' That was also the trip in which the pope kept repeating, 'Don't be afraid.'"

Vivid, worth reading. (Applebaum is also the author of a comprehensive history of the Soviet gulag system.)