S32E439 - Planning an Escape for 13 Years: How One Family Outsmarted the Iron Curtain

What would you risk to escape a totalitarian state—and how long would you be willing to wait?

In this gripping episode, Peter Kasl, author of Escaping the Grip of Eastern European Communism, tells the extraordinary true story of his family’s escape from behind the Iron Curtain. Born into a country transformed by repression after the 1968 Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion, Peter grew up in a world of fear, surveillance, and whispered conversations.

He recounts how his uncle’s defection marked the entire family as enemies of the st...