L IFESTYLE /C ULTURE
Local Family Publishes Holocaust Book
B OOKS
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
MAURICE CHORNEY was
one of those Holocaust survi-
vors who never really talked
about his experience.

But when his daughter,
Helene Shipon, was moving
Chorney from his house to an
assisted living home in 2010,
she found letters from his
family back in Poland.

And they did all the talking.

Chorney, who died in 2013,
immigrated to the United
States from Poland in 1938
when he was 17. He came
over to work at his uncle’s
Philadelphia shipyard.

But the rest of his family, his
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parents, his sisters and others,
stayed in Poland and died
during the Holocaust. Chorney
went on to serve in the Army
during World War II and beat
the Nazis who killed his family.

He also grew up to run the
shipyard, raise a multigener-
ational family of his own and
prove that Hitler did not win.

Now, Helene Shipon and
her husband, Philadelphia-area
businessman Alvin Shipon,
have used those letters to
document Chorney’s journey
in a book: “Dearest Maysheleh.”
Th e book is available on
Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s
website. It has two customer
reviews on Amazon. Both
readers gave it fi ve stars.

But Alvin Shipon, who
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610-828-7060 SJHorrow.com
SJHorrow@gmail.com Maurice Chorney with his
grandsons Courtesy of Helene Shipon
wrote the book, didn’t do it
for sales or ratings. He did
it as “a labor of love” and to
document history, said his son
and Maurice’s grandson, Matt
Shipon. In reading the letters
between Chorney and his
mother, father, sisters and
friends, the Shipons “fell in
love with the family they never
met,” Alvin Shipon said.

“We cried,” he added. “We
actually mourned for them.”
Th e letters revealed the
harrowing emotional journey
of Chorney’s young life. His
grandson recounted them
in a recent email to the
Jewish Federation of Greater
Philadelphia about the book.

“We hear the words of
his parents in their own pen,
describing the degradation of
their conditions,” Matt Shipon
wrote. “We hear the words of
other family members and
friends describing the fi nancial
and physical stress they were
enduring.” “As the letters go on, the
situation in Poland becomes
more and more bleak,” he
continued. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



L ifestyle /C ulture
“Until he receives a letter
from a friend informing him
that his family was murdered
and the house he grew up in
was burned to the ground,” the
grandson concluded.

After suffering the tragedy
but living through it, Chorney
carried a weight around for
the rest of his life, according to
Helene Shipon.

He worried when she and
her brother got minor colds;
he escaped upstairs when he
needed time to himself; he took
a glass-half-empty perspective;
he worked 10-12 hours a day;
he never said no to his loved
ones. “I had to ask my mother
if they could babysit,” Helene
Shipon recalled. “He would
never say if they had plans or
anything.” Helene Shipon knew the
letters existed even before she
found them while moving her
father out. When she was in
high school, he talked about
his history to her for perhaps
the only time.

Chorney called his daughter
down to the basement and told
her about the letters, though he
didn’t read them to her.

“My guess is he brought her
down to show her so she would
know if anything happened to
him,” Alvin Shipon said.

Upon reading the letters
later on, she gained a deeper
understanding of her father’s
journey, she said.

In the exchanges, Chorney’s
father, his one sister and his
friends were clear about what the
Nazis were doing to them. One
friend, on his own journey to
the U.S., said he’d rather be poor
here than rich in Poland because
in the U.S., no one would hit him
just for being a Jew.

Chorney’s mother, though,
was more positive. Be happy,
be healthy, be a mensch, she
told him.

All of Chorney’s loved ones
encouraged him to work hard
and thrive. They also read his
letters in return. Chorney’s
father would keep them in a
box and read them over and
over, according to a friend.

Chorney’s father, despite
his honesty about their situa-
tion, held out hope that people
would come to their senses.

“They will understand that
blood is being spilled for no
reason by innocent people,” he
wrote. “Then the world will
return to being a proper place
to live in.”
In a letter to his cousin in the
U.S. during the war, Chorney
Maurice Chorney, right, with family members in Poland in 1937
Courtesy of Helene Shipon
wrote that he was fighting to
fulfill his father’s vision.

“The allies know what they
are fighting for. Those Nazis
don’t,” he said.

“I’m alive and that’s
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something to be thankful for,
even though at times I wonder,”
he added. l
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