An Israeli Holocaust survivor living in Haifa has been named by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest man.
112
year-old Israel Kristal, born in 1903 in what is now Poland, received a
certificate from Guinness following the death of a Japanese man, who was
also 112, earlier this year.
Kristal
owned a chocolate factory in Poland before he was sent to Auschwitz
following the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in the city of Lodz
during World War II. His children died in the ghetto and his wife was
murdered at Auschwitz while he endured the internment doing forced
labour.
After the
war Kristal remarried and settled in Haifa. He has a daughter, Shula
Kuperstoch. She explained that he attributes his survival to God. “He
believes he was saved because that’s what God wanted. He is not an
angry person, he is not someone who seeks to an accounting. He believes
everything has a reason in the world,” she said.
Kristal, the son of a Torah scholar, still recites his prayers daily from memory, due to poor eyesight.
His
daughter says her father’s philosophy is moderation in all things. “He
says that if he had created some medicine to extend life then it would
be something notable. But his attitude is that he has just lived his
life, and reached this age, it’s just his reality, it wasn’t in his
hands. That’s what he believes,” she explained.
Officials
from the Gerontology Research Group, based in the U.S., are still
working on Kristal’s documentation, which includes his marriage
certificate from the 1920’s.
But he still will bear the title of the world’s oldest living man.
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