Gypsy Holocaust

The fate of the Roma during World War II is one of the most horrific and least known chapters in the history of Nazi atrocities. Jan Otto Johansen provides painful documentation of how they were persecuted, detained, and systematically exterminated across Europe. Elie Wiesel wrote an introduction suggesting that their survivors deserve the same amount of understanding and support as survivors of other groups. Jan Otto Johansen has worked as a foreign correspondent for the newspaper Morgenposten since 1956. After graduating in geography and ethnography, he joined the Russian language course in the Norwegian Armed Forces. He was a Rockefeller Fellow in 1961-1962, taught in Warsaw, Moscow, and the USA, and taught a seminar at American University in Washington, DC. He joined the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) as director of foreign affairs for the newspaper Dagsreven in 1966, and worked as its correspondent in Moscow between 1975 and 1977. He then served as editor-in-chief of the Dagbladet newspaper between 1977 and 1984. After that, he returned to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, where he worked as its Washington correspondent between 1985 and 1990. He then became foreign affairs editor of the television news department between 1990 and 1995. He corresponded in Berlin between 1995 and 2000. He retired from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation on 1 January 1983. He was awarded the title of Frit Oord Professor at the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo in 2003. Jan Otto Johansen served as Vice-President of the Christian IV Guild in Oslo for 16 years, and is now Honorary International Vice-President. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Society of Artists, the Heyerdahl Institute, and the Taterne/Romanie Foundation. He has received numerous awards and honors, including: the Kapelin Prize, the Arthur Holmesland Professional Book Award, the Skomfer Prize, the Christian-Jewish Dialogue Prize (Esther and Hermann Kahanes Fund), the Finnish Lion Commander Medal, the Hungarian Freedom Medal 1956, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Willy Brandt Prize, the Yugoslav Order of Merit, the Commander of the Order of Portugal of Prince Dom Henrique, and the Premio Hidalgo International Roma Award. Spanish, a Steam Radio Gold Pin from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), a Liberty Bell Award, and a Paul Harris Fellow at Rotary International. Jan Otto Johansen began his literary career at Aschihog with Gomulkas Polen in 1962, and subsequently published around sixty books at Kappelen, Aschihog and Dam, covering topics as diverse as the Middle East, Jewish culture, anti-Semitism, Roma, the USA, China, Finland, the USSR/Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as works by Norwegian and international artists, and seafood culture. His books have been translated into Finnish, Danish, Swedish, English, German, Czech, and Serbo-Croatian. He has been lecturing at the Norwegian Defense University and on the Norwegian Atlantic Committee Lecturer's Course since 1975; Forty-six of his lectures were published in the Atlantic Commission Writings series between 1975 and 2004. He also lectures at St. Anthony's University, Oxford, the University of Washington, Seattle, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and the American Diplomatic Academy, Washington, DC. Together with his wife and close partner, Siv Kirsten, he regularly gives lectures on cultural tourism trips to Berlin, St. Petersburg and Prague, and is a certified speaker on finance, banking and business in Norway.