Why did the ancestors of Gypsies leave their homes?

Around the year 1000 A. D. , some people from northwest India began to travel west wards. Nobody knows why. After leaving their homes, they did not settle down again but spent their lives moving from one place to another. Their later generations are called the Romany people or Gypsies. There are Gypsies all over the world and many of them are still traveling without fixed homes. There are about eight million of them including three million 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 on 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--Romani. They like 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 Gypsies children to go to school and Gypsies are often unable to read and write. In some places the education au thorities try to arrange special traveling schools for Gypsy children so that they can get the same education as other children.