Poland landed back on the legal map of Europe at the end of WWI, and Lublin celebrated by founding the Catholic University, still going strong to this day. Lublin also fostered other religions, notably Judaism, which showed itself in the pre-WWII 40,000 strong Jewish population. Remnants of that population can be seen along the signs and walls of the Old Town, and more stirring reminders found in the Majdanek concentration camp 3 km out.

Additional infamous events occurred in the war period, critical to Poland's post-war future: in 1944, a group called the Lublin Committee gathered sufficient strength there to fan the flames of communism, and grew into the post-war party that took up the reins of power for the next 4 decades. But what goes around sometimes comes around: Lublin's second claim to union fame occurred in May 1980 with an organized workers strike. Said strike beat the Gdansk shipyard shenanigans by 4 months, leaving Lubliners free to boast of their town as once again the birthplace of a union.