While the 1800s was a period of industrial growth, political modernization and social reforms across Western Europe; it also delivered legal reforms and emancipation toward the rights and status of Jews; who have been subject to centuries of persecutions (pogroms, apartheid and ethnic cleansing). In fact, even before the mass killings of Jews in Russia and the murder of six million Jews in World War II, the pattern was apparent. Despite these reforms, German anti-Semitism survived and began to increase during the mid-1800s. This revival was fuelled by two significant political movements: Zionism and German unification. The rise of nationalism due to the German unification gave birth to the Zionist movement as a national liberation movement
