TY - JOUR TI - Laughter Through Tears: The Wise Men of Chelm and the Holocaust in Nathan Englander's Story “The Tumblers” AU - Gasztold, Brygida TI - Laughter Through Tears: The Wise Men of Chelm and the Holocaust in Nathan Englander's Story “The Tumblers” AB - “The Tumblers” is one of the stories from Nathan Englander’s debut collection of short fiction entitled For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (1999). In this story a group of orthodox Jews from the Chelm ghetto tries to impersonate a troupe of acrobats in order to escape transportation to the death camps. The humorous stories of the Sages/Fools of Chelm, popularized for a wider international audience by Isaac Bashevis Singer, are a vital part of Yiddish folklore. Englander’s story delivers a fresh perspective on the lost world of the Eastern European shtetl by juxtaposing comedy with the horrors of the Holocaust in an unlikely combination of farce, irony, and profundity. VL - 2013 IS - Nr 2 (32) PY - 2013 SN - 1506-9729 C1 - 2450-0100 SP - 171 EP - 186 UR - https://ejournals.eu/czasopismo/studia-judaica/artykul/laughter-through-tears-the-wise-men-of-chelm-and-the-holocaust-in-nathan-englanders-story-the-tumblers