[originaltext] Around the year 1,000 A. D, some people from northwest India

Around the year 1,000 A. D, some people from northwest India began to travel westward. Nobody knows why. After leaving their homes, they did not settle down again, but spent their lives moving from one place to another, and their later generations are called the Romany people, or Gypsies. There’re Gypsies all over the world, and many of them are still traveling with no fixed homes. There are about 8, 000,000 of them, including 3,000,000 in Eastern Europe. Gypsies sometimes have a hard time in the countries where they travel, because they are different. People may be afraid of them, look down upon them, or think that they are criminals. The Nazis treated the Gypsies cruelly, like the Jews, and nobody knows how many of them died in Hitler’s death camps. Gypsies have their own language Romany. They liked music and dancing. And they often work in fairs and traveling shows. Traveling is very important to them, and many Gypsies are unhappy if they have to stay in one place. Because of this, it is difficult for Gypsy children to go to school, and Gypsies are often unable to read and write. In some places, the education authorities tried to arrange special traveling schools for Gypsy children, so that they can get the same education as other children.