Promised Land from CBC Radio

At the outbreak of the Second World War Max Eisen was a 10-year-old boy living with his large extended family in Czechoslovakia. By the end of the war, he was a teenage Auschwitz survivor and an orphan. Hear his story on Escape from the Holocaust.

Daniel Biru spent a decade on the run across the African continent. He was a student leader thrown in prison, then he became an escapee and a fugitive, and eventually a stowaway who was cast out into the open sea. Hear it all on Escape from Ethiopia.

Nora Lopez's husband Eduardo, a human rights activist, was denied refugee status by Canadian officials, then he was murdered by a Honduran death squad. Nora and her three children had to get out before the same thing happened to them. Hear it all on Escape from Honduras.

In September 2001, the Eritrean government shut down every independent newspaper in the country. Then they started rounding up the journalists. When Aaron Berhane discovered he was a wanted man, he made a difficult decision to flee across the border to Sudan, and eventually made his way to Canada. In 2010, he is finally reunited with his wife and three children when they arrive in Toronto. Hear it all on Escape from Eritrea.

In 1972, Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin announced that all Asians, regardless of their citizenship had to pack up and leave the country - and he gave them only ninety days to get out. Thousands of those of Asian Ugandans found refuge in Canada, including Anwer Omar. This year, nearly four decades, later Anwer and hundreds of other exiled Ugandans gather for a reunion picnic. Hear their stories on Escape from Uganda.

In the 1970s Alberto Lalli campaigned for justice in Argentina but his own government imprisoned and tortured him. He almost became one of the "disappeared" in Argentina's Dirty War but after seven years behind bars, he ended up fleeing to Canada - not to save himself, but to save his family. Hear it all in Escape from Argentina.

In 1981, Alino and Eva Baranik tried to flee Communist Czechoslovakia with their four year old son Miso. Just when they thought they could make it out safely, they were confronted by a Yugoslavian soldier at the Italian border. Hear it all on Escape from Czechoslovakia.

Thirty years ago Shahram Tabe was a student revolutionary in Tehran who became a counter-revolutionary - and then he became a fugitive. His journey to Canada involved smugglers, Turkish prisons and prostitutes. Hear it all on Escape from Iran.

In 1979, nine-year-old Uyen Vu and her family escaped Saigon by assuming false identities and boarding a fishing boat in the dead of night. Men with guns, bars of gold, divided families, prison time, spectacular failures - and pirates. Hear it all on Escape from Vietnam.