The father of the present Speaker of the Sejm was born on January 25, 1929 in Nowosiółki in Lviv province. Unfortunately, his childhood was marked by the tragedy of war, the invasion of the Soviet Army, the nightmare of the German occupation and then the terror of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Thus, when in the years 1943-1944 the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was attacking the Polish population, Zbigniew Kuchciński and his family were forced to seek rescue in safer parts of the country. (The family was warned against the danger by a Greek-Catholic priest!)
Poles from the provinces of the Second Polish Republic (Lwów, Stanisławów, Tarnopol), came by train to Przemyśl, where there was a large branch of the State Repatriation Office. After receiving documents, some of them continued their journey, others sought shelter in Przemyśl. It was there that the Kuchciński family began a new chapter in their lives. Thanks to the forged documents, Zbigniew, a few years younger, did not share the fate of his older brother Mieczysław, who, as a teenager, was taken away to work in Germany. His uncle escaped from there to Switzerland and then to Italy, where he enlisted in General Anders's army. He served there until the end of the war. Interestingly, Zbigniew's other half-brother, Marian Milewski ("Czarny"), escaped from an oflag after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising and also reached Anders through Switzerland. Both brothers were unaware that they were serving together in the Second Corps.
Zbigniew Kuchciński was a founding member of the Association for the Remembrance of the Eaglets of Przemyśl, which was founded in January 1989, from 4 March 1989 a founding member of the Society of Lovers of Lviv and South-Eastern Borderlands, and from mid-1989 president of the board of TMLiKPW. He organized help for Poles in the East, donations of food, collections for buying candles for graves of Polish heroes in the Orląt cemetery, defenders of Lvov. He initiated youth exchange between Lviv schools with Polish as the language of instruction.
He was a very active president. He tried to preserve and protect from oblivion the historical, cultural and scientific heritage of the Kresy region, and the Przemysl Society was the second, after the Wroclaw Society, to be so active. Meetings were attended by hundreds of Kresowiaks.
He died on March 17, 1994 in Przemyśl.
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Management of the Society of Lovers of Lviv and Southeastern Borderlands. Zbigniew Kuchciński first from left
