The holocaust is without question one of the darkest events in human history. Six million Jews and around six hundred thousand gypsies perished, not because of what they did, but because of who they were. A race was systematically destroyed, but what's behind this astonishing number of deaths is something even scarier - the racism ideology carried in countless people's mind and influencing their view of society. It is this extreme racialism of the Nazi ideology that turned both Jews and Gypsies into the official "scapegoats of Europe". Because of their racial "inferiority," they were accused being the source of almost every social problem took place in that period of time; they were selected to be the target of hatred and they were considered to be the cause of the sickness of the country that need to be "cured". It was not gas, not bullets, not even war itself, but racism that took millions of lives. .
Prejudice against Gypsies and Jews are not originated with the Nazis, and the fact that these minorities were chosen as targets of persecution is not a coincidence. Instead, it was an inevitable outcome of both religious and racial prejudices which had been passed on for centuries. For Gypsies, this kind of oppression had existed ever since their migration from India to Europe more than a thousand years ago. In many situations, the oppression was caused by the difference between themselves and their surrounding environment. Language, custom, and even their looking, all became the source of the problems. In Islamic world, Gypsies were considered as Christian because of their different religion believes and culture; but their dark skin and foreign-looking faces made them "Islam" in Christian society. Many Europeans associated their dark skin with the devil; others claimed that they were expiating the sin committed by their ancestor. The similar tragedy also happened to Jews in the form of anti-Semitism.
