[1] Forced conversions of Jews were carried out with support of rulers during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in Gaul, the Iberian peninsula and in the Byzantine empire.
[2] Between 1648 and 1649, a large-scale uprising of Cossacks and Ukrainian peasants led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky swept through the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the area of today's Ukraine.
[citation needed] Although forced conversions were less common in the 20th century, missionary activity remained strong, and many Jews chose to convert in order to integrate into secular society.
[7][8] Germany had three main periods of conversion, the first beginning with the Mendelssohnian era (see the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment) and a second wave occurred during the first half of the 19th century.
A list of 32 Jewish families and 18 unmarried Jews who had recently converted was given by David Friedlander to Prussian State Chancellor Hardenberg in 1811.
Across the German states, with the exception of Austria and France, many Jews obtained high stations and large revenues in return for their renouncing Judaism.
[17] Today, according to 2013 data from the Pew Research Center, about 1.6 million adult American Jews identify themselves as Christians, most of them Protestant.