Gypsies

Considered a pejorative collective term for Roma and Sinti. These nomadic people are believed to have come originally from northwest India, which they left for Persia in the first millennium A.D. Traveling mostly in small caravans, Roma and Sinti first appeared in western Europe after the fourteenth century. By the sixteenth century, they had settled in every country of Europe. It is estimated that between 250,000-500,000 Roma and Sinti perished in the gas chambers, concentration camps, ghettos, and mass executions of German-occupied Europe during World War II.