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
ZIONIST ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA
something to be thankful for,
even though at times I wonder,”
he added. l
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