This is a book of true stories about people who escaped. In our own century thousands of men and women have been so oppressed by ideological and physical tyranny that they left their native lands and became refugees and exiles. In the past, as Miss Cavanah points out in her perceptive introductions, earlier refugees played an important part in the making of America's history. This is still true today, and this book is principally concerned with those recent arrivals who have enriched the country to which they fled.

In We Wanted To Be Free some of these later refugees and exiles, including Pablo Casals, Sigrid Undset, Maria Trapp, Hans Habe and Mrs. Enrico Fermi, speak for themselves. Reading their dramatic true accounts reminds us anew that our Bill of Rights was written to protect us against the kinds of oppression from which these individuals escaped. In every case they were motivated by their need of the basic freedoms that many nations of the world have recognized formally in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This companion volume to the perennially popular We Came To America supplements the earlier collection with exciting, poignant, firsthand accounts of people from all around the world who have risked everything to gain the freedoms that native-born Americans often
take for granted. Participating vicariously in their experiences and seeing America through their eyes is a moving and rewarding experience.

From the dust jacket