The Jews who mostly left Brazil took off to what was then named New Amsterdam, today New York City, and founded the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States, the Congregation Shearith Israel. The ones who stayed, converted into Christianity and were then known as New Christians or Marranos, who sometimes practiced Crypto-Judaism. Even if the Jewish population under Dutch Brazil not surpassed a few thousand individuals, a considerably higher number of New Christians, in the past simply absorbed as Portuguese colonizers, arrived in Colonial Brazil - especially in the first centuries after 1500. They entered Brazil fleeing from the Inquisition or were deported by the Kingdom of Portugal and also Spain, latter being known as Degredados, someone who was sentenced or forced to exile. This also included Romani People from the Iberian Peninsula, what partially explains the curiously high numbers for a western country. Brazil has the second largest Gypsy population in the Americas after the United States, having also received Roma people from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Baltic countries during the 20th century.