The history of Lubartów began on 29 May 1543, when King
Sigismund the Old allowed local nobleman
Piotr Firlej to found a town called
Lewartów (the original name comes from
Lewart, the coat of arms of the
Firlej family). Lubartów was a
private town, administratively located in the
Lublin Voivodeship in the
Lesser Poland Province. The town became famous when it belonged to
Mikołaj Firlej, the son of Piotr Firlej. In 1559,
Wojciech Calissius founded a Protestant school in the town, which was one of centers of
Calvinism in Lesser Poland in the late 16th century. Mikołaj Firlej invited a number of skilled artisans from
France,
Germany and
Holland, as well as cattle breeders. Lewartów frequently changed owners. In the early 18th century it belonged to the
Sanguszko family, who rebuilt the palace, built two
Baroque churches and tenement houses. Upon request of Paweł Karol Sanguszko, on 21 November 1744, King
Augustus III of Poland changed the name of the town to Lubartów (in honor of Lubart -
Liubartas, the son of Lithuanian Prince
Gediminas; Sanguszko believed that Liubartas was the founder of his family). King Augustus granted a new coat of arms to the town. The town was annexed by
Austria in the
Third Partition of Poland in 1795. Following the
Austro-Polish War of 1809 it was included in the short-lived Polish
Duchy of Warsaw. The 19th century was not lucky for Lubartów, as the town, which from 1815 to 1915 belonged to
Russian-controlled Congress Poland, burned several times (1831, 1838, 1846). Two battles between Polish insurgents and Russian troops were fought there during the Polish uprisings of
1830–1831 and
1863–1864. In 1866 it became the seat of a county, and slowly began modernization. By 1912 it had seven manufacturing enterprises, including mills and a brewery, in 1922, glassworks were opened. Following the German-Soviet
invasion of Poland, which started
World War II in September 1939, the town was
occupied by Germany. In October 1939, the Germans executed nine
Poles, accused of possession of weapons. On 23 December 1939 the German police carried out a massacre of 48 Poles in the town. Tadeusz Illukiewicz, starost of the Lubartów County, was imprisoned in the
Lublin Castle in October 1939, and then murdered in Lublin in December 1939 in a massacre of 10 Poles perpetrated as part of the
Intelligenzaktion. In June 1940, during the
AB-Aktion, the Germans carried out mass arrests of around 500 Poles, who were then imprisoned in Lublin, and many of whom were soon deported to the
Sachsenhausen and
Auschwitz concentration camps. In 1941, the
Jews were confined to a
ghetto, and in 1942 they were deported to
extermination camps and the ghetto was liquidated. The town was liberated by the Polish
Home Army in July 1944. An unusual accumulation of amber deposits has been discovered in areas near Lubartow. A company called Stellarium is already mining these deposits, hailed as "the new amber route. Data from Poland's National Geological Institute in 2019 estimated that amber deposits in the Lubartów area of the Lublin region may be up to 25 times larger than those in the northern Pomerania region, 1,500 tons vs. 59 tons. And the region's amber deposits are available not as deep as in the north of the country, making mining more economically viable. == Jews of Lubartów ==